


Is This Your Card?

by FalseRoar



Series: Traces of Silver [5]
Category: Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Murder Mystery, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Sad Ending, Ship Teasing, Shooting, Tarot, We all know how this ends, Who Killed Markiplier?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 45,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26805304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalseRoar/pseuds/FalseRoar
Summary: This AU's version of Who Killed Markiplier has Abe and the District Attorney unexpectedly reuniting at a party for an old mutual friend that quickly goes wrong. A mysterious package from someone who knows far too many secrets about the party goers leaves everyone unsettled and paranoid, and that's before their host suddenly winds up dead with the wrong card in his pocket.Some dialogue and story beats are pulled directly from WKM with a bit of a twist, but we all know how this ends.
Relationships: Abe | The Detective & Y/N | The District Attorney (Who Killed Markiplier?), Abe | The Detective/Y/N | The District Attorney (Who Killed Markiplier?), Damien | The Mayor & Y/N | The District Attorney (Who Killed Markiplier?)
Series: Traces of Silver [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709179
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	1. The Invitation

Abe nearly missed the sound of footsteps on the dirt road under the steady whine of cicadas enjoying one of the last warm nights of the year, and if not for the cloudy night he might have been spotted before he could duck into cover behind the nearby tree. Peering out, he watched with narrowed eyes as the figure moved with purpose down the road, a long cloak hiding any of the few details he could have hoped to make out in the waning moonlight. At this hour, few would have dared to be walking alone on the road so far from the village, but he hesitated, waiting for any sign that this was the one he had been waiting for.

He couldn’t make that mistake again in one night.

For a moment, he thought the figure would continue on its way, but at the mailbox they abruptly stopped and turned toward the short drive that led up to the farmhouse on the hill. In the time it took the figure to draw back her hood, revealing pale skin and light hair that shimmered in the moonlight, and take in a deep breath, he had already cleared the distance between them.

“Excuse me, miss—”

She screamed.

Even with his hands over his ears, there was no blocking out her wail, a bright and eerie keening that sent a shiver down Abe’s spine and wrenched his heart even as it threatened to burst his ear drums.

And then, abruptly, it stopped, and he risked opening one eye to see the banshee press her hands to her mouth, face darkening with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry! You scared me!”

At least, that’s what Abe thought she said, but it took a few more seconds before the ringing started to clear up, his own voice muffled as he muttered, “We…need to talk.”

A few minutes later and Abe’s hearing was mostly back as he stood in the living room of the farmhouse, eyes darting back and forth between Farmer Jim or Joe or whatever he was and the banshee seated opposite him.

“That’s all you want?” Abe asked again, to be sure.

The banshee nodded. Here, indoors and in normal lighting, she seemed that much more ethereal and out of place, not helped by how she sat primly as though unwilling to touch anything around her. “If the farmer will keep his cows in his field, I will stop the wailing.”

“Well, you could have just said something,” the farmer muttered. “Not like that pond belongs to anyone, I don’t see what the big deal is—”

“It is not your land,” she said, again. “And I do not like the look of that brown cow, the one with the spot on its nose and the evil in its eyes.”

Abe started to point out how ridiculous that sounded, but the farmer just nodded and said, “Yeah, that’d be Abigail. Been meaning to ask Father Richard around to take a look at that one.”

“And I did try to tell you, but my kind cannot pass the wards around your land without permission, and you just kept running away at the sight of me. It was very rude.”

“Oh, and standing outside a man’s house, wailing away his death sentence is that much better?”

Abe sighed. “For the last time, a banshee’s wail isn’t fatal, it’s just a warning.”

“A portent of misfortune or death,” she added. “For the record, you may want to stop climbing on top of your house and hire someone else to fix your roof. That’s not part of the deal, just general advice.”

The farmer sighed, sinking in on himself a little. “Yeah, that’s what my daughter keeps saying. I’ll go into the village in the morning and see if I can’t find someone to fix that along with the fence. Maybe I can keep some help around for longer than a week without _someone_ scaring them off every other night.”

“Thank you,” the banshee said, springing up as though eager to leave. “I am glad to hear the others will not have to get involved.”

The farmer paled slightly, looking from her to Abe. “Wait, what others?”

She just smiled, which did little to set him at ease and probably explained the gratitude in the farmer’s voice as he turned to Abe and shook his hand.

“Thank you, hunter. I’m…not sure where I would be without your help. God, it’s going to be good to get some sleep again. How can I possibly repay you?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a cure for lycanthropy hanging around, would you?” Abe asked. “Maybe know anyone around who…”

He stopped when he saw the look the old farmer and even the banshee gave him and coughed.

“Or money. That works too.”

Outside, Abe felt the weight of the farmer’s money in his pocket and the stare of the banshee, who followed him to the road before speaking again.

“Thank you from me as well, hunter.”

“It was just a job,” Abe said with a shrug. Not a typical one, he’d admit, but these days he wasn’t sure what counted as ‘typical’ anymore. “I didn’t even have to do that much, but don’t tell him that.”

“Still, I apologize for wailing at you earlier. I know that it is not a pleasant sound, but…” She paused, her inhuman eyes staring a little too intently into Abe’s face for his liking. “Death seems to shadow your steps, hunter, even if it never seems to touch you.”

“Yeah, like this is the first time I’ve heard that one.” Abe tried to sound nonchalant, despite the pang at her words. She couldn’t know how true they felt some days.

“I feel I should warn you to be careful. There is something terrible coming, if you stay on your current path.”

“Do you mean the road back to the village, or…?”

Abe was only half joking, but the banshee just stared at him with something that looked close to sadness before turning and walking away.

He thought he would have preferred it if she just stuck to the wailing, all things considered.

Back at the cheap room he’d rented in the village, Abe took off his coat and hat, tossing both aside with a groan before sitting down on the foot of the narrow, rickety bed which gave a groan of its own. He stretched and hissed at a few aches and pains from his other recent jobs which hadn’t been as simple as standing around in a field to arrange a meeting. There was the griffin in the clock tower, that basilisk down by the coast—or had that been the circus who thought they could actually hire him to get their selkie back? It all started to blend together, the utter nonsense of it all, mixed with the rare moment when he would be pulled in to deal with a real monster, that exhilarating blend of terror and the thrill of the hunt.

A thrill that soon faded, leaving him here in a room identical to all the others, along with his pain and a paycheck. And so very, very tired.

Abe sighed, rubbing his bleary eyes with the back of his hand, and looked for the bottle he had left himself earlier only for his eyes to land on the elaborate invitation resting on top of its envelope where he had tossed it aside.

_You’ve been cordially invited to Poker Night at Markiplier Manor._

Just a small get together, Mark had insisted the other night when he pressed the invitation into Abe’s hand. Dinner and some games with his most trusted friends, and Abe had barely managed to keep a straight face at being described like that before telling Mark he had another client already lined up and waiting for him. This close to the city, to the memories of what happened the last time he was here, left him wanting to get out before he did something stupid. Like give too much thought to how easy it would be to stop by _their_ office, check in and see how they were doing this close to the full moon—

_“Oh, come on, Abe,” Mark had said, his tone wheedling. “I know the life of a monster hunter is busy and no doubt glamorous, but perhaps you could spare a day or two for some time off and, dare I say it, a bit of fun? Life is for the living, so live a little!”_

Abe had brushed him off with a noncommittal “see what I can do,” but now, sitting here and looking at the invitation with the banshee’s words still in his head, the thought of stepping away from it all and taking some time to relax and unwind sounded more than a little tempting.

Maybe a party was just the thing he needed.


	2. Trusted Friends

Abe was one of the first guests to arrive. He was always one to arrive early, the better to get a lay of the land, but when the butler showed him into the main area, he found someone else had beaten him to the punch.

Standing in the middle of the room, between the low glass table and a couch that looked more for decoration than comfort, and staring at the piano in the corner as though tempted to get a closer inspection, stood a man in a well-tailored black suit, leaning slightly on a matching cane as he ran a hand through his hair before turning at the sound of their approach.

If Abe looked surprised to see the mayor of the city here, Damien seemed no less taken aback at the sight of the hunter.

“If you gentlemen will excuse me,” the butler said, his eyes shifting between the two of them as though realizing they might want a moment to talk. “There’s still so much to do before we begin.”

The mayor recovered quickly, Abe had to give him that, and managed a professional smile as he stretched out a hand. “It’s Abe, isn’t it?”

“Got it in one, Mayor,” Abe said as he shook the hand, noting that it was a practiced handshake, like one given time after time with no hint of the person behind it.

“Please, I think you can call me Damien here,” he said, that last word leaving Abe to suspect such a courtesy wouldn’t extend past these walls. “I can’t say that I expected to see you here. I wasn’t even aware that you were back in the city, much less acquainted with Mark.”

“Known him for years,” Abe answered, his eyes looking Damien up and down just as much as the mayor was studying him, taking in the coat Abe just couldn’t leave behind anywhere along with the gentle bulge of the single firearm he had restricted himself to, and even that had been a monumental effort on his part. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised the mayor would be chummy with the local celebrities.”

He could only imagine what Mark’s reaction to being referred to as only a local celebrity might be, and even Damien gave a chuckle at that.

“Actually, I’ve known him for some time myself. When I was a child, my sister and I—” just as Damien seemed ready to launch into a story, they both heard the butler’s voice at the door.

“Good luck at the table tonight. I shall fetch you a drink forthwith.”

Both men looked at the person who walked in, another figure not far behind, and out of the corner of his eye Abe could see the mayor’s face spread into the first real, genuine smile of the night while his own remained blank as he met the eyes of the District Attorney.

_Y/N._

Zero warning, no time to prepare or even think of what to say after the last time they met, after their one and only case together that Abe had silently hoped would lead to more.

After he found out their secret.

He was saved from speaking when the mayor stepped forward, drawing their attention with a cry of, “Oh! There you are, old friend. I was starting to wonder if you could drag yourself away from the office.”

The District Attorney smiled, and Abe realized they were wearing the same kind of clothes he had seen them in before, apparently not having bothered with changing after work before coming here.

“I had it on good authority that if I didn’t come, I would never hear the end of it.”

Abe managed to drag his attention away from the mayor and his attorney to focus on the second person to enter the room. He was a smaller but well-built man, his stature suggesting military while his outfit absolutely screamed it, and there was a suggestion of a smile underneath that large and bushy black mustache as he introduced himself as “the Colonel.”

“I’ll admit, I’m not much of one for parties, at least not the kind you’d normally see around here,” the Colonel said once the introductions were complete, and Abe found himself nodding in agreement. He had heard of the legendary parties Mark had thrown in the past, outrageous, overcrowded and elaborate affairs that gave the reporters who weren’t nursing hangovers more than enough stories to share, and probably would have walked straight out of the place if it looked like this was going to turn out the same.

However, there were just the four of them in the room, although Abe could hear the raised voice of the chef somewhere behind him before the butler cut him off and returned with a tray of drinks.

“Dinner will soon be ready,” he said, smiling as though that hadn’t just happened. “Until then, may I offer some champagne?”

Abe took a glass and gave it a sniff without actually drinking any of it, although he saw the District Attorney and the Colonel down theirs without any hesitation, as though both were in desperate need of a drink.

“So where is Mark?” he asked the room at large.

As though waiting for his cue, the man himself appeared on the stairs in a satin red robe and little else except for a cry of “Welcome, welcome, one and all! My name is Markiplier. Thank you for joining me on this auspicious evening—”

He paused briefly, although Abe wasn’t sure if it was the sound he made into his full glass or the scoff from the Colonel that distracted the actor from the clearly prepared speech.

“It’s so good to be surrounded by such close and trusted friends,” Mark continued, and Abe noticed he met Y/N’s eyes at the word ‘trusted.’ Interesting, and not for the first time he wondered what exactly the connection between the two of them was while the actor went on, only tuning back in when Mark laughed and said, “But enough about that. Why don’t we all eat, so that this game can really get started?”

There were small white cards waiting on the set table in the dining room, assigning each person to their seat, all clustered at one end of the long table. It’s the only reason Abe found himself sitting next to the mayor with the Colonel opposite him, while Mark of course took the head of the table with Damien on his left and the attorney on his right.

“A little awkward, but the smaller table has already been set up for poker,” Mark explained as they all took a seat. “And apparently, eating at that table is out of the question.”

“It would be highly inappropriate to mix the two activities, yes,” the butler agreed, seeming to miss Mark’s expression as he set everyone’s plates in front of them. “Is everything to your liking, sir?”

“Sure, sure,” Mark said, waving a hand. “I’ve told you before, Benjamin, you can take it easy tonight. Loosen the tie a little.”

“As you wish, sir.” The butler bowed and walked back into the kitchen, where the unseen Chef was chopping something that apparently required a lot of effort and the occasional swearing.

“Ah, I’m sure he’ll get into the spirit of things soon,” Mark said with a shrug before giving his guests an inviting gesture to start eating.

Abe wasn’t the only one who happily picked up his fork and knife, but a sidelong glance at the place diagonal to his own caused him to pause. The District Attorney had yet to start eating, and when the Colonel made an offhand remark about the war, they seemed eager to turn toward him and begin asking questions which he was more than ready to answer.

It took Abe a second for it to register, and then he looked down at the silverware in his hands. Actual, sterling silver, silverware. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the mayor also watching the attorney with thinly veiled concern while Mark continued eating, blissfully unaware of anything wrong. With a start, he realized that not only did Damien know, but neither had informed Mark that one of his “close” and “trusted” friends was a werewolf.

For their part, the attorney played it off well, seeming so engrossed in the Colonel’s tales that it was only natural they just picked up a piece of food here and there from their plate with their fingers rather than giving the meal their full attention.

Looking back, he suspected the little food they had probably explained how the alcohol affected them so much, and wished he had a similar excuse for himself. Then again, anyone in the house would have admitted they all drank way too much that night.

Anything to take their minds off what happened next.


	3. Special Delivery

There seemed to be genuine surprise in Damien’s voice when he greeted you, not that you could blame him. Ever since he discovered your invitation lying out on your desk last week and your less than enthusiastic response, he had been putting the same determined effort into making sure that you came as he put into everything else in his life, and you had been just as determined not to commit one way or the other.

If the Colonel hadn’t been standing at the door, you might have been tempted to turn back around and give some excuse later, but at least when you entered together it soon became clear that this would be nothing like Mark’s usual kind of party. That kind of over stimulation, especially with the full moon only two nights ago leaving your senses sharper and more sensitive than ever, would have been too much to bear.

When Mark leaned in close at the table and said, “You’ve barely touched your food, Y/N! Is something wrong?”, it was all you could do not to wince.

“I’m not hungry. Maybe that perfume you’re wearing killed my appetite.”

You meant it as a joke, especially when you couldn’t exactly tell him why you were avoiding picking up any of the silverware (Who actually had real silver silverware these days? Most of yours could barely be considered metal.), but half a second after the words left your mouth you realized that maybe they might not be taken that way.

But Mark just smiled and threw an arm around your shoulder, nearly pulling you half out of your seat in the process. “What, you don’t like my cologne? It was a gift!”

“Did you get a receipt?” you managed to gasp out without coughing. You couldn’t place the smell exactly, but there was a heady floral overtone that seemed to cling to your nose and the back of your throat with every breath, not helped by the suspicion that Mark must have bathed in the stuff. You pushed him off as he laughed.

On your other side, the Colonel made a small noise into his plate that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, but when you glanced his way he wasn’t smiling. While Mark turned to Damien and asked him something about a recent news article, you wondered if Mark and the Colonel had shared even a single word between them since he arrived.

Then again, they weren’t the only ones avoiding a conversation. You glanced at Abe, just in time to see the monster hunter’s eyes dart back down to his plate. You hadn’t seen the man in months, not since the case you two were forced to work together.

Not since he let on that he knew.

Not to say that there hadn’t been issues in the city that might have benefited from having an experienced hunter around, but Damien was keen to prove the local authorities could handle things after the fallout from when that story leaked out to the papers.

What were you supposed to say after something like that? What could you possibly talk about that wouldn’t drift toward topics you’d rather avoid around strangers, much less Mark?

You looked down at your food and realized you really weren’t hungry.

“Best not to force it,” the Colonel said, noting your expression. “A few bites of bread to keep the nausea down, and try again later, that’s what they used to tell us back when I was a private. Of course, that was usually because we were going into battle the next morning, or had just come out of a scrap.”

“You said you fought in Europe, correct?” you asked. It was hard to be sure, as the Colonel often jumped topics mid sentence and you had yet to hear the end of one of his stories. “You mentioned the Rhineland, right? Isn’t that where…”

“The outbreak started, yes.” The Colonel shrugged. “Or one of the places, but it’s hard to tell where exactly, with how fast nasty stuff tended to spread in the trenches. Guy next to you starts coughing, and you can’t tell if it’s the fever or he’s about to turn and take a bite out of you.”

The Colonel took a bite out of his steak, which was so raw that a thin line of red dripped down his chin before he caught it with his napkin.

“Of course, that changed things a bit, and suddenly it didn’t matter what uniform the other guy was wearing so long as he still had a pulse.” The Colonel smiled, and you saw the flash of a wink behind his glasses. “Not exactly the way we wanted the fighting to end, but we routed those zombies, _homo necrosis_ , from one side of the continent to the other. Why, there was this one time, in a little town up near Naples or maybe Paris, I always get those two mixed up—”

A knock at the door followed by the gong of the doorbell interrupted the Colonel, who seemed miffed at the distraction. Not as much as Mark, who watched the butler pass through the hall with a frown before recovering. “Not sure who that could be, but Benjamin will—”

“Uh, sir?”

And Mark’s smile was gone in a surprising rush of anger as he called back, “Tell whoever is at the door to go away! If it’s important, it can wait!”

There were voices at the door, both rising higher until the door shut with more force than necessary. Any thought that would be the end of it disappeared when Benjamin stepped into the doorway of the dining room, a small package in his hands.

“Sir, this is highly irregular, but the delivery person insisted this was to be delivered to you, at this time, in the presence of everyone in the house. I feared if I did not take the package, he would force his way into the house.”

“You’re joking,” Abe said, voicing the disbelief of the others. “What delivery company was he with?”

Benjamin shrugged. “A local one that we’ve used before without issue, although he wasn’t a driver I’ve met before. He was quite insistent sir, and taking the package seemed to be the only way to get rid of him. I assure you, I will have a conversation with the owner on Monday about this behavior.”

“This all sounds ridiculously melodramatic and pointless,” Mark said. He smiled. “So let’s do it. Benjamin, get the Chef.”

“Sir?”

“You said everyone in the house, that includes him.”

“Are you sure about this, Mark?” Damien asked while the butler did as he was told, but the actor only shrugged.

“It’s probably just a joke or a stunt from one production company or another looking to get me interested in some new project. And if it’s not, well, good to have some witnesses, am I right?”

Damien seemed doubtful at that, but before he could waste any more time trying to reason with Mark, the chef entered the room with a growl.

“What, one of you got a problem with my cooking?”

His glare seemed to find you in particular with your nearly full plate, and it was all you could do not to sink down in your chair. Earlier, you had barely even looked in the direction of the kitchen and he had threatened you with a ladle until the butler stepped in and gave you a chance to escape.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Mark said, gesturing toward the empty chairs. “You two take a seat and we’ll see just what this mysterious sender thought was so important for us all to be here to see.”

You heard the butler explain the situation to the chef in a low murmur as they passed by, his voice almost drowned out by Abe asking, “Speaking of mysterious senders, there a name on that thing?”

“Just mine,” Mark said, turning the label so everyone could see before picking up his steak knife and using it to cut the tape. “Hm. Just a bunch of envelopes— _Oh_.”

Without any explanation, he pulled a stack of envelopes out and spread them out in the center of the table for all to see before tossing the empty box aside.

There were seven in all, each bearing a single word on their otherwise blank faces: _Actor, Mayor, Colonel, Hunter, Attorney, Chef, Butler._

All of you stared down at the envelopes for a minute before the chef said, “Well, I’m the only Chef around here, so I’ll be taking that.”

He grabbed the envelope, and following his lead the other six were picked up, the rasp of paper filling the otherwise silent room as everyone looked inside to see what theirs contained.

You found two cards inside your own envelope, both identical in size, but while one appeared to be a Tarot card with an elaborate picture of a hooded figure bearing a weapon, your eyes were drawn to the other card, blank except for the one word typed on it: _Werewolf_.

Your pulse filled your ears as the room began to swim around you, barely able to register as Damien eventually said, “What is the meaning of this?”

Mark laughed, the sound startling you enough to look up and find that he was showing his own card to the table. “Looks like I drew Death. That’s not ominous at all, is it?”

Abe, whose eyes were bright while the blood seemed to have drained from his face, croaked out the words, “Is this a threat?”

“A joke, maybe,” the Colonel said, closing his envelope with a scowl. “A really bad one.”

“Oh, come now, don’t take it so seriously,” Mark said. “Y/N, let me see—”

Your protest came too late as he pulled the envelope from your hands and took out one of the cards to examine it before showing the rest of the table.

“See, Death just like me. We all got the same card, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Damien hesitated before speaking. “That’s not the card I received.”

He showed his Tarot card, revealing a regal figure seated on a throne, the letters below proclaiming “The Emperor.”

Beside him, Abe frowned but rather than show his card asked instead, “Did anyone else get a Death card?”

He looked around the table, but the other three shook their heads, the chef muttering that he didn’t even know what a “Hierophant” was.

“That’s…not the only thing concerning about this situation,” Benjamin said, but when all eyes turned on him, he paused before clearly changing his mind about what he meant to say. “Whoever sent this…bizarre package, knew who would be here tonight. Of course, the package was meant for Master Mark, and Chef and I are hardly surprising, but I took care to ensure no one outside of this room knew about this party.”

“Like anyone can keep secrets for long in this city,” Mark said, and you were not the only one at the table to flinch. “Come now, look at these faces! This is supposed to be a party, isn’t it? Benjamin, please, grab some drinks for our guests and join us. Chef, if you would—”

The chef snorted, his chair legs scraping as he stood and walked out of the room, his envelope crushed in his grip.

“Okay, you’re busy, I can see that,” Mark said, momentarily deflated. “I think the rest us are ready to have some fun with real cards, am I right?”

He stood, the others following suit, and you tried not to sound too urgent as you said, “Mark?”

“Hm?” He followed your gaze and smiled. “Right! Could make a good souvenir for the night, if nothing else.”

He handed both the Death card and envelope back to you, which you immediately shoved into a pocket before anyone else tried to take a closer look. You weren’t the only one to keep your envelope close as you saw Abe bury his deep within his jacket and Damien neatly fold the envelope around the silhouette of his card before tucking it away, while the Colonel absentmindedly put his in a random coat pocket. Even Mark, despite his dismissal of the whole thing, put his in a pocket of his robe, not that the thing seemed to have room for something like that.

When Benjamin followed the group into another room bearing a tray of glasses, you may have downed yours a little faster than you meant to. And maybe the next one as well.

You don’t remember the exact line when you went from buzzed to roaring drunk, although from the little you could recall of the night later, you weren’t alone on the journey. Said memories blurred together in a blend of alcohol, too loud music, and laughter, as each round of poker grew more ridiculous than the last until the cards lay forgotten, the party roaming through the house in a blur of images that you still had trouble piecing together after the fact.

Why did Abe and the Colonel both bring a gun to a poker party? What could have possibly possessed them to think it was okay to start waving them around, comparing pros and cons of their models while they were so drunk they could barely stand?

Speaking of stand, who knew Damien still had it in him to do a keg stand like that?

Did you really flip off the butler?

_Why?_

Not that you didn’t think he probably deserved it, even if you weren’t sure of the reason, just as part of you suspected you might have partially deserved the punch from the monster hunter that sent you sprawling later.

You remembered Damien’s concerned face close to your own, his words lost under the overwhelming music and the darkness quickly swooping in, and the only thing after that was the relief of your body hitting a bed, your blurred eyes just making out the time on the clock before you gave in to sleep: 1:30 A.M.

You tried not to drink much, and especially never to let yourself get as drunk as last night, and you remembered why that was when you woke up and realized you were in the shape of a wolf.


	4. There's Been a Murder

You laid there in the darkness beneath the sheets with the comforter pulled over your head for several minutes after you changed back, heart hammering as the events of last night pressed in with one clear, missing gap: exactly when you went from human to wolf.

Slowly, you eased your head up, blinking in the sunlight streaming in to a bedroom you didn’t recognize. It was eight thirty, and your sensitive ears didn’t pick up on any screaming or whispering going on outside your door that might suggest people outside were discussing what to do about the werewolf in the room.

_Werewolf._

It wasn’t just the hangover that made your stomach twist and turn. The thought of that card, that single word, left you very glad you hadn’t eaten much last night.

_Who knew?_

Who would go through such a bizarre series of steps just to…what? Out you to the others in the house? Blackmail you?

_Your card._

You looked down at your clothes and felt a moment of panic before you spotted your jacket hanging neatly on the back of a nearby chair. Despite the very real hangover, you were up and across the room in seconds, breathing a sigh of relief when you felt the shape of the envelope in the pocket.

Hanging up the jacket, that wasn’t something you did, so that meant someone else. Damien?

You tried to take a sniff of the clothing only to wince and gag at even the hint of that awful cologne Mark had been wearing last night. A vague memory of Mark throwing his arm around your shoulder, laughing so hard he could barely stand, came to mind and you sighed, only for it to turn into a cough when you breathed the scent in again.

Right, so that would be a no on the jacket then. You slipped your hand into the pocket and pulled out the envelope inside, only to shove it straight into your pants pocket when you heard the sound of someone in the hallway. Better to keep it on you than let someone else find it by accident.

You reached the open door just as Benjamin, the butler, turned the corner.

“Ah,” he said, all smiles and crisp, clean uniform despite being at the same party last night. “Good morning! I hope you had a good night’s rest. I prepared for you a seltzer with cocaine. Best thing for the morning after, if you ask me.”

He smiled and winked at his joke as you took the glass, noting that there was nothing in his eyes or expression to suggest he knew. That, you thought as you took a sip of the seltzer and felt the bubbles ease your stomach, or he was one hell of an actor.

“Thanks,” you muttered before he walked away, the sound of your own voice causing a brief rise in the pain in your head.

The sound also caused the man standing near the railing opposite your door to turn with a smile almost as bright as the sunlight streaming in through the windows behind him, again with no sign of the man who had been performing keg stands like they were going out of style last night.

“Ah, there’s our little monster,” Damien said. “You really knocked them dead last night. I haven’t seen you go wild like that since our days at university—”

“Damien.”

“Good to let the beast out every now and then, eh, old friend?”

“Damien!” He had the shame to look momentarily abashed at his choice of words as you continued in a whisper, “Last night, did I—did anyone—”

“No, no, don’t worry,” Damien said, stepping forward to put reassuring hands on your elbows. “I took you upstairs myself, and you were fine until the balcony when you… _Ahem_. I assure you, there was no one else around to see, and I locked the door to your room once I was sure you were safe and sound in bed.”

You breathed out slowly, your relief brief but pleasant before you remembered the card.

“Damien, we need to talk somewhere. In private, as soon as possible.”

Damien didn’t seem as surprised by your words as you thought he might be. “Well, I still have some work to finish, and then there’s breakfast, but it shouldn’t be hard to find some time to catch up after that. Is that okay?”

You nodded, silently hoping that would give you enough time to shake off this hangover and get some control of yourself. Food would help, and until then moving around might ease some of the anxiety welling up within you. So while Damien went toward his room, you walked down the stairs and through the halls, noting that like Damien and Benjamin, the house itself was surprisingly clean again. You noted the suit of armor, now standing straight and polished, mentally comparing it to last night when it served as one of the targets for beer pong as you backed away with a sense of being watched.

Suspicious of what might be under that visor, you tried to shake off the feeling as you turned and walked into the den.

Just in time to see the flash of red as something large and heavy dropped from the floor above, missing you by inches.

You looked down at the corpse of your host splayed out on the floor.

The flash of lightning from outside that accompanied the discovery felt cheap and dramatic, like something out of one of Mark’s plays, but you knew, looking at his glassy open eyes, that this wasn’t an act.

The roll of thunder followed so close to the lightning that they were nearly indistinguishable, drowning out whatever sound escaped from your throat.

Still, as if in answer to your cry, Abe came walking into the room asking about the lightning, dressed only in a white bathrobe and, for some reason, his hat, and without missing a beat he called to the rest of the house, “Oh my God! There’s been a murder!”

While he stared in shock at the corpse, the butler entered the room and cried out as a third round of lightning crackled overhead, barely having time to stop before a fourth strike accompanied the chef’s scream of “Murder!”

Distantly, you thought there must be some terrible storm raging outside, but it was a stray thought, a random bit of nonsense as you stared at each man in turn, hoping that one of them could explain what was going on. Wishing one of them would reveal the trick, prove that Mark wasn’t…that he couldn’t be—

Abe thankfully interrupted your thoughts, suddenly so close that you could easily smell the body wash he used. With wild eyes, he grabbed the collar of your shirt and asked, “What the hell happened here?”

“I don’t—I don’t know,” you stammered, the numbness creeping into your mind again as you glanced back down at the body on the floor.

You heard the accusation in Abe’s voice as he demanded answers, some kind of an explanation, but before you could gather yourself together to even try to explain what you saw—or failed to see, Benjamin spoke up.

“Sir, the body’s cold. He’s been dead a while.”

“A while?” you repeated, feeling a chill of your own settle in. “Like it could have happened last night?”

You looked around the room as Abe’s grip on your collar loosened, but no one seemed comfortable with that idea.

“Does anyone remember the last time they saw Master Mark during last evening’s…entertainment?” Benjamin asked, and again no one answered. You racked your mind, but your tattered memories of last night’s party didn’t help much. He had been there, of course, but now that you thought about it, at some point he just wasn’t there in anything that you personally remembered.

“Well, I have some familiarity with corpses, comes with the job,” Abe said, stepping back from you with a lingering glance that you couldn’t begin to decipher. “Y/N, can you hand me my jacket over there? That’s what I came down here for in the first place.”

You turned around and found the jacket in question lying on the couch, and spun back around when you heard the chef and butler cry out in simultaneous disgust just in time to see Abe stripping off his white bathrobe to reveal he was wearing his regular clothes underneath it.

“Thanks, partner,” he said, taking the jacket without seeming to notice their reactions or your own brief horror closely followed by relief.

As he stooped over the body, you heard yet another voice at the doorway and realized how much worse this was going to get.

“What the hell happened here?” Damien asked.

“Oh, mister Mayor, I’m so sorry,” Benjamin started, and you felt a rush of guilt. “There’s been a murder.”

Thunder and lightning again, as Damien frowned in consternation and asked, “A murder? Who?”

He briefly turned to look at the sharp crack from overhead before his searching eyes went around the room again, his view of the body blocked by the hunter.

This wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be finding out like this, you thought to yourself, but at the same time you just watched, unable to bring yourself to say the words.

“It’s Mark,” Chef said with a helpless shrug, Abe confirming it.

“Why?” Damien asked, disbelief tinging his tone even as he looked down at the body in question. “Who would do this?”

“That’s exactly what me and my partner here are here to find out,” Abe said, gesturing towards you without looking up from what he was doing. You were trying not to watch as he patted down the body, rifling through Mark’s robes and examining the skin carefully.

“Wait, what?” You looked from Abe to Damien, wondering when you had agreed to this, and the mayor seemed equally surprised by the news.

“I don’t think…” Damien trailed off, his gaze meeting your own before he breathed in sharply. “The Colonel, I need to have a talk with him.”

You knew he wanted to be the one to tell him, to break the news as gently as he could. Like you should have tried to do, a guilty inner voice thought. Mark was Damien’s friend, they had known each other for years, and the Colonel just as long. What could be going through his mind right now?

“Um, shouldn’t we be calling the authorities?” Benjamin asked, and you nodded in agreement.

“Abe, this is a job for the police, we can’t— _I_ can’t—”

“You think anyone’s getting in or out of this place with that freaky lightning storm going on outside?” Abe asked as he pulled a knife from somewhere within his jacket, at which point you weren’t the only one to fix eyes on something, anything else. “There’s clearly something going on here, and I for one am not just going to sit around and wait for that to pass over when there could be a killer among us.”

“He fell,” you said, finally voicing what you had been thinking this whole time. “I saw his—I saw him hit the ground, that doesn’t mean—"

“Oh, and he just happened to fall on this, did he?” Abe asked, holding up a small, misshapen object that, reluctantly, everyone in the room had to lean in to really see. “A bullet, straight to the chest.”

“Silver,” you said softly, your eyes instinctively meeting Damien’s.

“Now why would someone shoot Mark with a silver bullet?” Abe asked, looking around the room while he used a handkerchief from yet another pocket to clean his hands. “Not to mention all of the other damage his body’s been through. Someone must have been trying really hard to make sure he stayed dead, but why?”

“Could it have something to do with that?” Chef asked, pointing at a white square just visible in Mark’s chest pocket, having moved as a result of Abe’s investigation.

The hunter reached into the pocket and came out with two cards.

One was the Death card Mark showed the table last night, now stained on the corner.

The other was a white card, on which had been typed a single word:

_Werewolf._


	5. Silver Bullets

Abe swore under his breath while the chef did not feel the need to hold back as he began to rage that he wasn’t paid enough for this.

He tried not to look at the attorney as he straightened up, or at whatever expression the mayor had on his face right now, trying to focus instead on what this might mean.

“I assure you, Master Markiplier was not a werewolf,” Benjamin said, his calming hand outstretched toward the chef in particular, who just batted it away. “I am fairly sure one of the staff would have noticed that.”

“Except Mark was firing people left and right, wasn’t he?” Abe found his mouth moving on autopilot, just as it had when he first saw Mark’s body and turned on the attorney. The idea then had been the same as whenever he came across a witness—accuse anyone of murder, and they’ll start spouting off all they know if it means clearing themselves. Or that was the theory he generally went by, but instead the attorney had just seemed more closed and withdrawn than normal, their eyes so distant he wasn’t sure they even heard him then. Maybe, in retrospect, accusing someone of killing their best friend while they were still in shock might not have been the most tactful thing he had ever done.

Now he doubted he was helping much, even as he pushed forward with his current line of thought. “There’s barely anyone left on the staff now, isn’t that right?”

“Well, correct, we’re down to three at the moment, but Chef and I are still here most of the time. And even if Master Markiplier has been less…inclined to socializing lately—”

“You mean locked up in his bedroom half the day,” the chef interrupted with a scoff. “Man could be doing anything up there for all I care, so long as he paid me. Guess that’s out of the window now.”

“Mark was not a werewolf,” the mayor said, his voice straining with emotion. “We don’t even know who sent those cards or why! Why should we believe anything they say?”

An uncomfortable silence went around the room, and Abe thought of his own pair of cards tucked away deep within his jacket. The knowledge that he wasn’t the only one to receive a second card wasn’t as comforting as it could have been.

“Man, I’m just glad I didn’t get one of them death cards,” Chef muttered under his breath, only to immediately glance at the attorney when he realized what he had said aloud.

For their part, they didn’t acknowledge the remark. Instead, apparently still thinking of what Damien had said, they asked, “The box those cards were sent in, where is it?”

“It should still be in the dining room,” Benjamin said, a tinge of embarrassment in his voice as he added, “I’m afraid that I haven’t had the time to fully clean the house as I should, there have been so many…distractions this morning.”

“Yeah, I’d call finding out your boss has been murdered one hell of a distraction,” Abe muttered, unsure if anyone heard him over yet another round of thunder and lightning. “Now why don’t we have another look at that package?”

He led the way, pausing only once when he noticed the figure sitting alone in a darkened room, the shapes of plush chairs and hanging curtains suggesting a home theater of some kind, but Damien broke away from the group first with a murmur about having a word with the Colonel. Abe shrugged and continued on, glad he wasn’t the one who had to have that conversation.

In the dining room, Benjamin went to the side table and picked up the box, which he handed over to the attorney. Abe had to admit he had expected the butler to hand it to _him_ , but he managed to hide his irritation if only because he probably would have handed it over to them in private, if for no other reason than to see what they could pick up.

Looking for it, he saw their nostrils flare as they looked over the outside of the box, pausing on the label that Mark showed the table last night, before frowning as they gave the box a slight shake.

“There’s something else in here.” They opened the box and turned one of the flaps out to reveal a piece of paper stuck to the underside, which fluttered with the movement but did not let go of the cardboard until they pulled it free. “Mark must have missed it when he opened the package last night.”

Their eyes skimmed over the short note before handing it over to Abe, allowing him to see that it was a series of lines typewritten much like the notes on the cards.

“Well, what’s it say?” Chef asked impatiently, and against Abe’s better judgment he began to read aloud.

“ _The cards have been dealt, the game has already begun. Whether you choose to play your hand or not, fate has already decided which chambers are loaded.”_ Abe turned the note over, but there was nothing else on the back to help explain. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Loaded chambers, sounds like Russian roulette to me.”

Abe spun around to see the Colonel standing at the door, the Mayor at his shoulder.

The Colonel shrugged at the expressions on the other faces in the room and said, “It was just the first thing that came to mind. What kind of game are we supposed to be playing then? I do hope it’s not Jumanji, took me ages to get out of that one.”

For someone who just found out his friend was dead, the Colonel seemed surprisingly blasé about this whole affair, Abe thought to himself. Then again, the man had seen enough death and undeath on the battlefield that maybe it took more than that to rattle him these days. Still…

“Clearly, the game of some sick and twisted individual,” Benjamin answered. “They must have planted the accusation in Master Mark’s envelope in the hopes that one or all of us might turn on him.”

“Well, whoever did it didn’t know what they were dealing with if that’s the case,” Abe said. When everyone stared at him, he felt the need to explain, “When I was examining the body, I found signs that Mark had been stabbed _37_ times, poisoned, beaten, strangled, drowned, _and then_ shot, in that order. Not exactly the way to go about it if you knew you were about to take on a werewolf.”

“Mark was a werewolf?!” the Colonel shouted. “Why, don’t be absurd! Where would you get a ridiculous idea like that?”

“Mark’s card,” Chef said, while Abe flashed the card in question. “We found it on him. But maybe the killer didn’t know, and that’s why they had to go through all that other stuff before the silver bullet finally put him down.”

“And they somehow had time to try all of that against a werewolf?” Benjamin asked. He raised his hands, gloved palms up, in a shrug. “Is it just me, or is this making less sense the more we learn about this situation?”

“Or mayhaps we are making this more complicated than it need be,” the Mayor said, his voice betraying an effort to keep his emotions in check. “Silver bullets are not exactly common.”

Suddenly, every eye in the room was on Abe, and not in the good way.

He felt the heat rise to his cheeks as he said, “Oh, sure, blame the monster hunter. Even if I had a motive, which I don’t—”

Chef cleared his throat and gestured towards the “Werewolf” card still in Abe’s hand.

“Please, like I would waste time with all of that other stuff if I wanted to kill a werewolf,” Abe scoffed. “Rule number one for dealing with werewolves: go straight for the silver.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the District Attorney wince and pinch the bridge of their nose with a sigh.

Right. Maybe that didn’t come out like he wanted it to.

“All the same, if everyone here who happens to possess a gun would be so kind to show their ammunition?” The mayor’s eyes were burning in to Abe now, but the hunter didn’t blink. He’d faced far deadlier stares than the glare of an elected official. Metaphorically and literally deadly, in the case of that one Gorgon who really didn’t handle rejection well.

“You know what? Fine. Colonel, anyone else here got a weapon?”

There were head shakes around the room, except for the chef who for some reason looked at the ladle he brought with him from the kitchen as though considering it for a moment.

“Never bothered with silver bullets myself,” the Colonel said as he pulled out his own gun, the same one he’d been waving around willy-nilly last night. “Homo necrosis, any kind of bullet will do, or a baseball bat if you’re feeling cheeky.”

“They’re expensive,” Abe agreed as he pulled his gun out of its holster. “That’s why I only use them when I have to, otherwise the ones I have on hand stay in a case I keep in my jacket.”

Both men unloaded their guns at the same time in front of everyone, revealing five bullets and one empty chamber each. In the palms of their hands, the ten silver bullets gleamed as they caught the light.


	6. The Hermit

Abe stared down at the silver bullets in his palm, identical to those held by the Colonel who sounded absolutely baffled as he said, “These aren’t mine.”

The hunter started to reach into his jacket and swore when he realized he didn’t have a hand to spare. Looking around, his eyes landed on the attorney and, after just a moment to think before he did something really stupid, handed his gun to them with a hurried, “Hold this for me.”

Reaching into his jacket, he found the right interior pocket and pulled out a simple silver case, which when opened proved to be completely empty.

“…These are my bullets,” he said, then quickly corrected himself for the sake of the room, “But I didn’t put them in my gun, and I certainly didn’t give them to that guy.”

He gestured toward the Colonel, who said, “And I would most certainly never use another man’s bullets when I have my own. It’s simply not called for!”

“Did both of you keep your weapon with you during the party last night?” the attorney asked, looking the gun in their hand over before glancing at the Colonel’s. “I think I remember the Colonel had his, uh, out on several occasions.”

“I may have been waving it around a little, but I know how to keep the safety on,” the Colonel said. He glanced down at the gun in his hand and flipped the safety on with a quick clearing of his throat. “I also may have left it sitting out at some point last night.”

“Yes, I recall finding it on the kitchen counter this morning while I was trying to clean,” Benjamin said with a roll of his eyes, as though he often had to deal with guests leaving loaded weapons just lying around.

The attorney turned their gaze and asked, “Abe? What about you?”

“Unlike _some_ people, I don’t leave my gun just lying around. I went upstairs and put it in the nightstand in my room after the second or third round of poker.” That would be the one where the attorney, already way past tipsy, still somehow managed to bluff everyone at the table with a pair of 2s. “There was a key to the drawer, which I kept on me until I returned to my room.”

Which admittedly didn’t help his case, but the butler spoke up. “There are master keys that can unlock the bedrooms and the nightstands in each room. Master Mark has—had one, and we keep a spare in the kitchen closet in case any of our guests accidentally lock themselves out.”

“No one came around asking for one last night,” Chef said.

Great.

“Maybe someone took it while you weren’t looking,” Abe pointed out. “As for the bullets in my jacket, I got a little hot under the collar last night—”

“I’ll say,” Damien muttered under his breath.

The district attorney didn’t take their eyes off of the hunter, but Abe couldn’t meet their stare for long, not without seeing that absolute shiner he left on one of those eyes last night. Continuing, he said, “So I took it off and dropped it on the couch at some point.”

The attorney sighed and ran a hand through their hair. “Which means anyone could have accessed both guns and the silver bullets last night. Great.”

“Easier for some more than others,” Benjamin muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Abe asked.

The butler shrugged. “I’m just saying, you and the Colonel could have easily—”

“Hey now, I didn’t even know about any silver bullets,” the Colonel interrupted.

Abe chimed in, “And if it were easier for anyone, it would be someone who knew there was a key they could use to get to our stuff, like you or the chef—”

“Don’t drag me into this!” the chef snarled. “If I wanted to kill Mark, I wouldn’t mess around with some fancy bullets—”

The accusations began to fly back and forth faster and faster, until a shout broke through the noise.

“Enough!”

All eyes turned on the mayor, who raised a hand to slide it over his slicked back hair before continuing in a much more even tone, “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I suggest we all take a step back and calm down before anyone does something rash. Agreed?”

There were mutters of agreement around the room, with the chef saying something about needing to cook before being the first to leave, the butler soon following suit. The mayor placed a hand on the Colonel’s shoulder, but he just brushed it off with a “Not now, Damien,” before taking his own leave.

The mayor paused, both hands on his cane as he looked at the district attorney as though wanting to say something, but his eyes darted toward Abe and instead he murmured, “I’m going to take a walk. Find me if you need me.”

The attorney nodded, but it was nearly a minute after he left before they spoke.

“That card was meant for me.”

Abe jolted out of his thoughts and stared at them. “What?”

“The werewolf card. It was in my envelope last night, but…” They drew a crumpled envelope out of their pocket and opened it, to reveal there was only the Death card everyone had seen last night. “Mark must have accidentally mixed up the cards somehow when we were all at the table.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Abe said. “Anyone with an ounce of sense could figure out Mark wasn’t a werewolf.”

“But what if they didn’t?” The district attorney’s voice dropped to a whisper, and Abe realized their arms were wrapped tight around their chest, which was rising and falling far too fast for regular breathing. “What if someone saw Mark with my card, what if they thought he was the werewolf and that’s why they—”

“Y/N.”

“What if it’s my fault Mark’s dead?”

“Did you have anything to do with this? Did you send those cards?” Abe asked. He grabbed his empty gun from their tight grasp and waved it in their face. “Did you pull the trigger?”

“No, of course not—”

“Then it’s not your fault!” Abe lowered his voice when he saw their wince and continued, “Now prove it and help me find out who killed Markiplier, because like it or not I need a partner right now that I can trust, and you’re the only one in this house that comes even close.”

They took a deep, shaky breath, and breathed out slowly. “You trust me?”

“…Sure,” Abe said. About as much as he could trust anyone these days, which wasn’t much.

“Then why did you bring silver bullets to this party?”

Abe stumbled over his words as their eyes pierced his own. “I-I just came from another job, and no hunter worth his salt would go out without some silver on him, plus some actual salt and I—it’s not like I even knew you were going to be here, or else I would have…”

He trailed off and the attorney arched an eyebrow, waiting to see what he would do different. Problem was, he suspected he might not have come to the party at all, if it meant coming anywhere close to a conversation like this.

Instead, he asked, “How do you even know Mark, anyways?”

“University.”

“There’s no way Mark went to college.”

A smile tugged at the corner of their lips, but it disappeared far too quickly. “His professors would probably agree with you, but he was there when he wasn’t chasing after acting gigs or pretty faces. That’s where I met him and Damien. How did you meet Mark?”

Abe hesitated, wondering if one of those pretty faces Mark chased might be the one he was looking at now, but his sense of self-preservation kicked in before he could ask. Instead, he said, “Knew him for years, occasionally did the odd job for him looking into people. Not my usual thing, but it made for an easy break every now and then, especially after a difficult hunt.”

“Looking into people?”

“Backgrounds, digging up anything they might want to hide.” Abe shrugged. “It’s a useful skill to have if you’re trying to figure out if the guy next door is secretly a man-eating monster or just very socially awkward, but Mark just had normal gold digging ‘friends’ and prying tabloids to worry about for the most part.”

They nodded, and Abe looked them over again but saw no sign of the earlier panic and guilt. If it was there, they were doing a good job of burying it for now. Still, best to keep them busy and not dwelling on those thoughts for too long.

“Speaking of digging, I want you to take a walk around and talk to the others, see what they know.”

“Me?” They sounded genuinely surprised at the suggestion.

“Yes, you. Of the two of us, you’re the one most everyone around here is going to trust enough to talk to,” Abe said, speaking from experience. Even normal civilians didn’t want to have much to do with monster hunters. Maybe it was the killing thing, or maybe it was the garlic and other less than stellar smelling items they kept on them, just in case. “I’m going to take another look at the body. Unless you think you could smell…?”

They shook their head, but just as Abe was wondering if that might be a ‘he used to be my friend’ thing, they said, “That cologne Mark was wearing last night is so strong I doubt I could pick up anything even if I wanted to. It’s all I could smell when we were in the living room. Well, that and the blood…”

“Right, of course,” Abe said. He had barely noticed the smell himself when he was investigating the body, but then again he knew from prior experience his partner was far more sensitive to smells like that than he was. “Then you check in on the other guests and I’ll check the body…I just need some fresh air first.”

At that, the attorney nodded with a look of sympathy that Abe knew was misplaced before leaving the room. He gave them a moment before exiting the dining room and heading straight for the nearest way out of this house. Storm or no storm, he didn’t care at this point.

Outside, Abe took a deep breath and sighed. Even the tense, charged air outside that warned of the thick, low-hanging clouds roiling in the sky overhead felt like a godsend after the stifling atmosphere of the house. He looked up, but despite the dark clouds that brightened occasionally with the flicker of lightning there wasn’t any rain yet, although once it did start it would probably be a flood.

For now, he took the risk and walked out on the stone patio, looking down over the railing at the grounds below before checking behind him. Once sure that the windows there were empty, he pulled out the envelope labeled ‘Hunter’ and looked inside. The same two cards from last night stared back at him, the face of one showing a cloaked figure with bowed head, a lantern in one hand raised as though searching for something, the other hand resting upon a staff. A helpful label underneath marked it as the ‘Hermit’ card, while the other card contained a long list of names.

Names that Abe needed no help remembering, each one burned into his mind along with the memory of how they died. Listed on the card was every partner he had ever had, even those whose time was so short that no one else should have known their name, not in this context.

No one living, at least. Abe was always sure to finish his hunt, even if the revenge never came close to swallowing the pain left behind.

He shuddered and tucked the envelope and cards back into his jacket before taking out his gun and the silver bullets. Five in his hand, and the Colonel had walked off with five more—but Abe knew for a fact that his case had been full before last night and had contained twelve bullets in all. One had found its way into Mark, but that still left one unaccounted for.

After a moment, Abe loaded the five silver bullets back into his gun and holstered it, determined that it would not leave his side. They would be harder for anyone else to get to there, and a silver bullet could kill a murderer just as easily as a lead one, no matter what they were.

Mark hadn’t been the only one with a death card after all, and Abe refused to lose another partner.

Not again.


	7. A Good Man

You didn’t have it in you to tell Abe the other fear that came to mind when you saw him draw your card from Mark’s pocket. The thought that it could have somehow led to his death was terrible enough without the lingering questions it left behind. That hadn’t been the same pocket Mark put his cards in after dinner last night, you were fairly sure of that, which could mean he had taken them out and looked at them again during or after the party.

What had he thought, when he saw that single word written on your card? He must have known who it was meant for, what it might mean.

What had crossed Mark’s mind when he put it together, when he realized you were a werewolf?

The sound of raised voices was a distraction you didn’t know you needed, and you followed the sound of Damien’s voice to the theater room you had noticed before.

“How can you be so flippant?!”

“Flippant? I’m taking this matter very seriously.” You recognized the drawl of the Colonel’s voice, who sounded relaxed in the face of Damien’s anger.

“Oh, don’t give me that horseshit! I know you hated him, but…God damn it, he reached out to you!”

“Oh, what do you want from me?”

_“I want you to care!”_ Damien’s voice cracked with the plea as you approached the door and peered in, uncertain whether to interrupt or walk away.

“Just because I’m not weeping like a child doesn’t mean that I don’t care.”

“I can’t believe…” Damien gestured with his cane, momentarily lost for words. “You come find me when you pull your head out of your ass!”

Damien turned toward the door suddenly, pausing for a brief second when he saw you standing there before he muttered a brief “Excuse me,” his eyes unable to meet your own as he brushed by.

You looked over your shoulder as the mayor walked away, wringing the cane in his hands as he always did when he was upset, and decided against following him. You’d learned over the years that when Damien was like this, it was better to give him his own space to cool down first.

Instead, you walked into the room and spotted the Colonel sitting in the corner, head turned toward the window where it was so dark outside you could barely believe it was still morning and not the middle of the night.

At the sound of your approach, he angrily said, “Damien! I don’t—oh.”

He stood, his tone friendlier as he said, “Ah, good to see you again! I had hoped to have a talk with you after last night’s festivities. But…you’re probably here to help the hunter’s ‘investigation of murder.’”

You both looked up and toward the windows at the sound of thunder, the lightning briefly illuminating the expansive grounds outside. When nothing followed that outbreak, he asked, “How’s the eye doing?”

You reached up and gently brushed a fingertip against the swollen skin around your eye. Abe certainly hadn’t bothered with holding back his punch last night.

“All the better for you asking about it. You…wouldn’t happen to remember why he punched me, would you?”

“Ah, a little too far into the drink to remember, eh?” The Colonel chuckled. “Does he really seem like the type to need a reason? Anyway, I’ll help you, I’ll tell you what happened to our dear friend Mark.”

Did he mean to sound so sarcastic with those last three words?

“I remember the events of last night clearly, especially when we were playing poker and he said,” here the Colonel jumped into an imitation of Mark, or at least a loud, overbearing version of him. _“’Oh, look at me! My name is Markiplier now! Forget all my friends or the people that helped me along the way, just look at my money! Oh, I need to pay people to be my friends!’”_

“I don’t remember it going that way—”

“Who’s telling the story, me or you?”

“Okay, but is the voice really necessary?”

“…Yes.”

_“’Everyone just received terrible reminders of their past, but do I care? No! I just pay all my problems to go away! Glug glug, oopsie-poopsie, I can’t hold my booze! Gotta go off to the little boys’ room, who wants to join me? I’m going to go up there on my stairs, my house has more than one staircase, oh look at me and how great I am, oh no, there’s someone already in the little boys’ room! Oh no, it’s the delivery guy and he’s killing me!’_ And dead.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold on.”

“That’s how it happened. Probably,” the Colonel said with far too much self-assurance.

You sighed and rubbed your forehead, wondering where to start.

“The delivery guy?”

“Well, obviously whoever sent the package is behind Mark’s murder.” The Colonel paused to give space for the thunder and lightning to do their thing before continuing. “I clearly remember Mark leaving the poker game early, and did you ever see him come back?”

Well, no, you couldn’t remember seeing Mark during any of the shenanigans going on after the game was over, but that didn’t say much. Still, maybe someone else had noticed Mark leaving early—that could narrow down the suspects if true.

“You mentioned everyone receiving terrible reminders of their past. Do you mean the cards?”

The Colonel waved his hand as if to dismiss his own words. “I just mean, Mark was the only one of us who wasn’t bothered by the cards he got, and look what happened to him.”

A suspicion that had been forming for some time now made you ask, “Colonel, how many cards were in your envelope?”

“Two, same as everyone else I suppose,” the Colonel answered. He shrugged. “A Tarot card and a card with something written on it, not that either bothered me as much as it did some of the others.”

Thinking back, the room had been very quiet when everyone opened their envelopes, but you were so thrown by your own card that you hadn’t paid much attention to the others.

As if sensing that, the Colonel placed a hand on your shoulder and smiled as he said, “They’re just words on a card. They don’t mean anything.”

Easy for him to say, you thought to yourself, and asked aloud, “What did yours say then?”

Without hesitation, the Colonel pulled a card out of his pocket and showed it to you. There was only a single name typed on it, which you read aloud.

“Dave?”

“Good man, good soldier. I served with him back in the day.” The Colonel gave the card a sad smile and slipped it back into his pocket. “Buried him myself.”

“I’m…sorry to hear that.”

“Oh, there are worse ways to go than blood loss. At least I didn’t have to put a bullet in his head to make sure he stayed down, eh?” The Colonel laughed, or tried to, but the sound was so close to tears that you wondered if his tinted glasses were hiding something.

Strange, that the death of Dave would bother him so much, but losing a friend only this morning barely registered. It certainly sounded like the Colonel and Mark hadn’t been on the best of terms, and shock and grief hits everyone in different ways, but you couldn’t blame Damien for being frustrated.

“I should go and check with the others,” you said, and the Colonel nodded.

When he spoke again, he sounded much more like his usual self. “Can’t just take my word for it, but I’m sure someone will back me up. Just be on your way and investigate the entire house—although you might want to start with the kitchen and something for that eye.”

“…Right. Thanks.” You resisted the urge to touch your eye again and turned toward the door while the Colonel eased himself back into his chair and went back to staring out the window.

“I’ll be here, when you’re done.”

You paused in the foyer to check your reflection in a mirror hanging there and winced. It was a bad bruise, and with the zero effort you had put in cleaning yourself up this morning after last night, you looked like the definition of a rag-a-muffin. If you showed up in the courtroom looking like this, no judge in the city would have hesitated to have you thrown out.

“You have looked better.”

Jolted out of your thoughts, you looked left to see the butler standing near the base of the stairs, just out of sight of the mirror’s reflection. Benjamin cleared his throat and tried to sound a bit more professional as he continued, “You’re just the person I was looking for. Come with me, I need to show you something.”

You did not move. “What exactly do you want to show me?”

The butler hesitated. “It’s…difficult for me to talk about. It’s better if you see it for yourself.”

Against your better judgement, you decided to follow Benjamin down yet another hallway. For a moment, you were afraid that he might take you back into the room where Mark’s body still lay, but he must have led you in a different direction than you’d been in before because none of this part of the house looked familiar.

How big was this place?

“Now if you’re looking for answers, there’s really no mystery at all. There isn’t a single detail of this house that I’m not privy to,” Benjamin explained as the two of you walked together. “And not a single guest that I’ve not personally vetted.”

“You think you know who might have killed Mark?” you asked. You saw the butler’s eyes glance upward, but for the moment the storm outside was quiet.

“I believe I may have found a vital clue, at the very least.” The butler stopped and turned on you suddenly. “Now I warn you, what you are about to see is not for the faint of heart.”

He looked down a flight of stairs leading into darkness and took a breath to steady himself. “A domain of evil, but in we must go. You first.”

You looked from the stairs to the butler, waiting to see if he was serious, but as he stood there holding the waist-high gate to the stairs open for you, you could practically smell the fear washing off of him. Reluctantly, you walked down thick, polished steps that turned to stone on the first landing to match the rough stone walls, and went down again into the darkened cellar.

A single light barely illuminated barrels and some furniture, and for some reason yet another chandelier, as if this place didn’t have enough of those. Your eyes rested on the wine racks, but seeing nothing amiss there you looked down to find a single broken bottle.

“Avert your eyes!”

The butler dashed down the last of the steps, broom and dustpan in hand, and went straight for the broken glass.

“I’m so sorry you had to see this!” he wailed, sounding genuinely devastated as he began to sweep. “Master would be so displeased! If only he were still alive!”

His wailing cries echoed off of the cellar walls as you backed away and then made a hasty retreat up the stairs and away from…whatever was going on down there.

At the top of the stairs you took a breath and tried to shake off the discomfort that whole encounter had left you with, but it wasn’t working.

Why did he think a single broken bottle was a clue? After last night’s party, it was more surprising that the house was still intact, much less as neat and orderly as he had managed to make it in just a few hours’ time.

But who would have gone down into the wine cellar last night, except for the butler? And you somehow doubted that guy was up to breaking anything, and certainly not letting a mess stay out in the open for just anyone to see.

You eased your way back down the stairs quietly, not that you needed to bother. Benjamin was so wrapped up in his weeping and sweeping futilely to get every last shard of glass up that he couldn’t possibly hear your return.

He certainly didn’t see you stop and close your eyes before taking a deep inhale.

The air in the cellar was cleaner than you might have expected, although it was more open and airier than the average basement. There was still a definite mustiness in the air, possibly from the barrels, along with the sharp ting of alcohol from the faded stain on the ground.

More importantly, you caught the whiff of Mark’s terrible cologne from last night, so overpowering that it took you another second to recognize the last smell that barely lingered in the air, already faint and growing dimmer with every disturbance caused by the butler’s movements.

_Gunpowder._


	8. What Little Chef Saw

In the kitchen, you ran cold water over a rag dug out of one of the drawers and, with a wince, pressed it against your bruised eye. The excess water from the rag ran down your wrist and dripped onto your shirt, but it did feel good after the initial shock of the first touch.

“I thought I told you to stay out of my kitchen!”

You turned around to find the chef standing uncomfortably close. You backed away from him, or tried to, but your hips bumped into the counter behind you.

Following your stare, the chef lowered the knife in his hand and said, “I was about to start making some food when I heard a rat scurrying around in my kitchen.”

“Sorry, I just needed something for my eye,” you said, removing the compress for a second to show him.

He snorted with a barely suppressed laugh at the sight. “Man, that hunter really hit you, didn’t he? I’d offer you a steak, but I don’t want to waste good meat on you.”

The chef turned away from you and went to the island in the middle of the kitchen, where he had already laid out a cutting board and what looked suspiciously like leftover spaghetti. With an exaggerated grunt of effort, he raised his knife and brought the blade down on the cutting board with a smack before repeating the cut again and again.

Maybe it was cathartic, or maybe it was supposed to be intimidating, you weren’t sure, but you waited until after one of the swings against the defenseless noodles before speaking again.

“You don’t know why he hit me, do you?”

“Probably for asking stupid questions,” Chef answered before bringing the knife down with another crack. “I bet you’re here to ask me about last night. Well, you can tell that dick that I was busy cleaning up after that delicious meal I prepared, no thanks to any of you. It was one AM before I finally retired to my room. Took me forever to mop up all of that blood.”

“Blood?”

“You cook raw steak, you’re going to get some juices,” Chef answered with a wave of his knife. “Not that you would know, you barely touched any of my cooking!”

“…Sorry, I didn’t have much of an appetite last night,” you said. It wasn’t like you could tell him the silverware made it almost impossible. “It smelled really good though.”

“I know my stuff,” the chef said as he used the flat of his blade to push the pulverized noodles out of his way before pulling over some vegetables for chopping.

Even over the whack of the blade, you can make out the sound of the butler still sobbing down in the wine cellar, although the sound was faint enough you doubted the chef could hear it.

“Is the butler…is he okay?”

“You mean in the head? I don’t know, man, this place seems to attract weird people,” the chef said, his shrug indicating that he included himself in it.

“He seems to be taking Mark’s death pretty hard,” you said. Not that he was the only one, but you added, “Was he that close to him?”

“You really don’t know nothin’, do ya?” The chef paused in his dicing of lettuce to look you up and down before explaining what that was supposed to mean. “Mark, he helped me and that pompous clean freak out when we needed it most, and I ain’t ashamed to say it. Not for me to say what was going on with Benjamin, but after Easy Pickin’s went under, Mark was the only one willing to hire me. He’s cheap as hell, but at least he pays something.”

“Easy Pickin’s?” You knew that name.

“Restaurant I used to work at.”

“Wait, wasn’t that—”

The chef cut you off with a glare. “So you read about it in the paper, huh? Or were you one of the people howling to shut us down?”

You flinched at his choice of words and admitted, “No, I’d been there. Not as a—I don’t mean—”

The chef growled and you cleared your throat.

“I had contacts who liked to meet there, because of the…atmosphere.”

“And the damn good food.”

“Yeah. That too.”

You had been to Easy Pickin’s before, and knew exactly what kind of clientele they had served before the city shut them down. Vampires, ghouls, any relatively human-shaped persons that managed to live on the outskirts of society knew that the restaurant was the place to go for anyone with…special dietary needs. The candles on the tables provided ambience and enough low-lighting to pretend not to notice what the table next to you might be eating or drinking, although your nose picked up on enough details despite your best efforts to drown them out.

The chef sighed, his shoulders sagging. “I was the head chef there, where people knew what respect meant. We weren’t hurting anybody, but…”

“But people weren’t comfortable with the reminder that nonhumans live in the city too,” you finished for him. The wards on the city’s walls could force anyone who wanted to enter or exit the city to go through the official gates, but not all monsters could be picked out of a line that easily.

You personally knew there were ways to get around being spotted, especially for someone determined enough to risk everything on a new life.

You weren’t sure if it was the words or something in your tone when you said them, but the chef gave you a new, studying look before he spoke again.

“Tell you what. I’ll let you check with my Little Chef, see if he’s picked up anything that could help.”

“I’m sorry, your little…?”

You trailed off as the chef placed a proud hand on a small statuette that looked remarkably like him, down to the long tangle of hair trailing down over its shoulder, although you had yet to see the chef give a smile like that. You weren’t sure if you would ever be ready to see him smile like that statue.

“A witch gave Little Chef here to me to keep an eye on my kitchen as a gift, because my pies are just that good. If anything happened here, he can show you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s some kind of scrying spell or something, looks for anything out of the ordinary. I don’t know, magic ain’t my thing.”

“No, I mean you’ll let me look at it?” The chef could have easily not told you about it, or shown it earlier to prove his innocence in front of everyone if he thought it would help. “Why now?”

“…You know those cards everyone got last night? How Mark’s outed him as a werewolf?”

“Yes, but Mark wasn’t—”

“This is what I got.” The chef held up a card, on which was typed the words “Easy Pickin’s.” “Seein’ what Mark had, I guess that whoever sent those cards thought I would be ashamed of where I used to work, like I would ever regret something I put my heart and soul into.”

The chef jabbed a finger into your chest, leaving you glad that he at least didn’t use the knife still held in his other hand. “Which is why I want you to find whoever’s behind all of this, so I can look ‘em in the eye and spit in their face.”

“…Got it,” you said. It wasn’t the most admirable reason, not when the person in question was most likely a literal murderer, but you weren’t about to talk him out of it.

The chef turned back to his meal prep with a more or less positive grumble, leaving you staring at the statuette sitting on the corner.

How, exactly, was this thing supposed to work?

You glanced at the chef out of the corner of your eye, but he had stopped paying attention to you and you suspected that asking him would just lead to more angry outbursts and knife waving. Better to save that as a last resort.

You leaned closer and placed a hand on the statue’s head to turn it in search of some kind of device or clue to activate it, but the second your skin touched the oddly warm ceramic, the room around you changed.

It was still the kitchen, but dark and silent. An awareness in the back of your mind that you weren’t familiar or comfortable with told you that it was just after one AM last night, the still glistening floors suggesting that the chef really had just finished his mopping. You tried to turn your head, but the movement did nothing to change the angle of what you were seeing.

Out of the ordinary, Chef had said. Like someone entering the kitchen.

At your thought, your vision blinked before returning to the same room, the sense in the back of your mind telling you that it was now 1:35. Only instead of an empty kitchen, you saw Benjamin loom large in your peripheral vision as he walked past the statue on the counter. You tensed as the butler leaned to look down the hall in the direction of the chef’s room and then around him before opening the door—

Of the fridge.

The butler proceeded to pull a glass bottle out of the fridge and pour himself something before abruptly returning the bottle to the fridge and leaving the room at speed, glass in hand.

The sound of approaching footsteps that scared the butler off proved to belong to the Colonel, who stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked around as if searching for something before lazily scratching at the back of his neck with the barrel of his gun. The gun which he placed on the counter next to the statue before raiding the fridge himself, during which he popped something you could not see straight into his mouth. Then he shrugged and walked out of the room.

Leaving his gun behind.

Your heart leapt and you willed the statue to go to the next time someone entered the room, but when your vision skipped again it was to find the light of dawn streaming into the room as the butler entered through the same door he left by the night before, duster in hand.

At the sight of the gun on the counter he sighed and picked it up with two fingers before calling for the Colonel on his way out.

If no one exchanged the bullets in the Colonel’s gun then, that meant it must have happened during the party last night. Of course, everyone was distracted enough that still left a wide window to work with, but there was something else that bothered you about what the statue had seen.

Benjamin had made a remark about the kitchen closet, the one very clearly in view all night, and the spare master key contained within it. The key that someone would have had to use to get into Abe’s room and his nightstand to get to his gun.

At the thought of the monster hunter, Little Chef began to jump back through previous nights, giving you scattered visions of other rooms in the house devoid of anything interesting until it stopped at a view through the kitchen’s back door, the awareness in the back of your mind putting it at three nights ago, on the 7th. Through open blinds, you could see a figure still undeniably recognizable even in silhouette.

“Abe!” Mark called out, his voice sounding tinny and distant through the statue, and you felt the breath leave your chest in a sharp gasp.

“Mark,” Abe said warmly, taking his hand. “Good to see you.”

“Great to see you,” Mark answered. “Look, I’ll cut right to the chase: Chef, Butler, good?”

“Chef’s an asshole,” Abe said, earning a nod in acknowledgement from Mark, “But he’s clean. The butler, the new guy, also clean.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Mark said.

Their conversation was cut short as they moved out of sight of the door and Little Chef, leaving you to step back from the statue and into the present.

“I don’t…I—” You shook your head and looked around, but the chef seemed to have left while you were distracted. The timer over the oven, from which a smell wafted that made your empty stomach turn with a wave of nausea more than hunger, suggested it would be some time before he came back.

With no one around, you walked over to the closet and opened the door to find the spare master key hanging on its hook. You briefly considered taking it, but realized that could just lead to more issues if someone found it on you.

But if it was here and there was no sign of anyone returning it since last night, then…

A brief pain throbbed inside of your skull, made worse by the smell coming from the oven that you couldn’t ignore, too strong and overwhelming just like the tick of the clock on the wall, the heady odor of polish the butler seemed to have used everywhere, the scent of cleaning fluid used to mop the floor last night that still lingered on the tiles, the voices of the chef, the butler, and the colonel arguing in the distance after a chance encounter in the hall, every smell and every sound in the house—

It was just too much.

You stumbled out the back door, arms wrapped around yourself in a desperate attempt to stay in the moment, to stay in control, while you could feel the tingle in your spine and along every nerve, the familiar precursor to the change.

Not here, not now.

Outside, in the fresh air, you took a deep, steadying breath and then another. You’d had moments like this before, where your whole body reacted to a situation and decided “wolf” was the best option, but never this bad or for this long. It had been a constant since you entered the house last night, as though your whole being was trying to turn in and defend itself. From what, you didn’t know, but the last few hours had sent the sensation into overdrive. You had already changed once without meaning to, last night apparently, and that was before…

Before everything else.

When Damien found you sitting on one of the benches beneath the metal gazebo near the stairs some time later, you still felt at a complete loss. A sentiment echoed on your friend’s face when he spotted you, before sighing and taking a seat beside you.

“Look, I’m sorry you saw that argument with the Colonel,” he said, surprising you. “I lost my temper and it wasn’t right.”

“Are you sure I’m the one you should be apologizing to?”

Damien sighed again. “He must be in shock. The Colonel’s an eccentric, it’s his best quality and his worst. But he’s my friend, and…so was Mark.”

The cane passed back and forth between Damien’s hands, his focus at times more on the silver-topped piece of wood than anything else as though it was the only thing within his reach that he could control.

“I know I’m supposed to be a leader in this scenario, but I can’t help but feel lost. I’ve known Mark for years, since we were kids. And he’s just gone?”

His voice broke and you found your hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him in your own silent way.

“I-I’m sorry, I know Mark was your friend too—”

“You don’t…Please stop apologizing to me, Damien.” You felt the strain in your voice as your hand slipped off of his shoulder. “You have every right to feel as lost and confused as the rest of us, if not more. It just…the more I look at it, the less any of this makes any sense. Those cards…”

“Were upsetting, as they were clearly meant to be,” Damien said. There was something in his tone, but before you could ask what his cards were, he continued, “Was that…the card Mark had in his pocket, was it…?”

You nodded, unable to even look in his direction. Your hands clasped together as you leaned forward, fighting to remain human as you said, “Yeah. Yeah it was. You were right, I should have told him, before—before…Maybe he would—”

“My friend.” You felt Damien’s hands on your shoulders, irresistibly turning you toward him. You could see his cane lying on the bench behind him, but your eyes resisted meeting his own for as long as they could. “Look at me. That is not a road of thought you should ever go down. We cannot change what we did or did not do any more than we can change what happened last night.”

“So, what, I’m just supposed to forget Mark was killed with a silver bullet while holding my card? That if I hadn’t been so terrified to even _look_ at it again, I might have realized it was gone? That maybe if I had tried to talk to him last night instead of trying to drink my thoughts away, maybe he wouldn’t have been alone with a killer? That maybe if I had ever tried to tell him, maybe I would at least know…know if he…”

“Mark would have understood,” Damien said with a quiet certainty that you could never understand, ignoring the prickle of fur beginning to rise under his hands, the elongation of your teeth. “I believe that completely. Just as I believe we can figure this out, together. We can choose to keep moving forward, if for nothing else than to bring this murderer to justice.”

A rumble of thunder overhead distracted you both, leaving you to wonder if underneath a metal structure was really the best place to be with a storm coming.

“You know what I always say—”

“Don’t you dare—”

“Life is ours to choose.” Damien smiled as you pushed him away with a groan at his far too often repeated motto. You still felt raw inside, the pain of the last few hours still too close and fresh to fully process, but being here with him helped. As if you could stay in control for a little longer.

You knew, no matter what shape you were in at the moment, Damien could always calm you down and bring you a little closer to human again.


	9. On its Own?

Abe walked out of the house quickly, heart racing as he scanned the stone patio that ran around this side of the house in search of his partner, but he paused at the unexpected sound of their laughter. Habit getting the better of him, he slowed his pace and, reaching the corner, peered around carefully so as not to be seen.

They were sitting with the mayor, at an angle so that Abe could only see the smile tinged with sadness on the mayor’s face, how he watched them speak as his hand drifted up before stopping itself to rest on the support of the gazebo above them instead.

From this distance, Abe could not hear what they were saying (not for lack of trying), but he could hear the murmur of the attorney’s voice before they stood, the mayor quick to follow suit. A rush of guilt for not so unintentionally spying, plus the risk of being spotted, urged Abe to move forward at what just happened to be the same moment that the mayor leaned in toward the attorney, only to stop short when he saw the hunter striding toward them.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Abe said and the mayor’s posture stiffened.

“You’re not—”

“But I need to talk to my partner about the whole dead body situation,” Abe pressed on, not giving him time to explain.

“Of course,” the mayor said with a measured degree of calm. “Once this storm has passed the actual police can be summoned, and they will need all the information they can get.”

The attorney glanced up at the sky, their brow furrowed as they studied the dark, heavy, but stationary clouds hanging overhead. “Have you two noticed—”

“What do you mean, actual police?” Abe asked.

“Well, while the city may have employed you in the past, you don’t have any authority here. We don’t need a monster hunter, despite what your gut instincts may tell you,” the mayor responded, his dark eyes glittering as they met Abe’s. “If anyone is in charge of this investigation, it would be Y/N.”

“Technically, as a possible suspect I can’t—”

The district attorney’s protest was cut short by the two men speaking nearly at once.

“My friend, please, no one in their right mind would believe for a second—”

“Everyone here’s a suspect, we’ve just got to make do with what we’ve got and—"

They stopped and the attorney just sighed. “You said you needed to talk to me about something, Abe?”

“…Yeah, I need to show you something,” Abe said, ignoring the mayor’s thinly veiled glare.

He didn’t care if it hurt Damien’s precious feelings to hear it: everyone here was a suspect, and to pretend otherwise wouldn’t help anyone get to the truth. The mayor for his part did not protest, only giving the attorney a nod as he watched them follow the hunter inside.

“We have a problem,” Abe admitted once they were out of earshot. “You’re not going to believe this, _I_ can barely believe this!”

“What is it now?” Y/N asked, sounding exhausted despite waking up barely an hour or two ago at most.

“The body, it’s gone,” Abe said as he led the way to the door, feeling his earlier rage and frustration and confusion bubbling up now that he wasn’t distracted. “It just disappeared!”

“What? You can’t be serious!” the attorney protested, and Abe had never wanted to be proven wrong so much as when he glanced into the room and stepped aside, gesturing for them to take in the den and the taped outline on the floor, roped off from the rest of the room.

The very empty outline.

“Who did this?!” Abe glared at the outline before turning to meet their accusing stare. “It wasn’t me.”

“What do you mean…Why…” The attorney looked from him to the very Mark-less stretch of floor. “How?!”

“Well, I was giving the body a thorough examination,” Abe said, and the attorney raised a hand to stop him there.

“Yes, I’ve seen you at a crime scene before. Please, if we could skip the details…”

“Right.” Abe normally would have argued the necessity of his methods, but he recognized now might not be the time. “Somebody, not me, must have moved it in between the time I was the last person alone with the body in the room and then stepped outside for a few minutes to take care of some personal business, that you don’t need to know about. Could have been anybody. Except me.”

Probably best he didn’t tell them about the pair of reporters he spotted snooping around, not when they already looked frustrated enough by everything else to tear someone’s throat out. Besides, he was fairly sure he managed to chase those two nimrods off before they could see anything to suggest what was going on inside the house.

“…I’m not sure there’s a way you could have possibly phrased that to make yourself sound more guilty if you tried.” The district attorney pinched the bridge of their nose and breathed in slowly before sighing. “Are you sure no one else—”

They were interrupted by the butler, attracted no doubt by the sound of their voices, who immediately looked down and exclaimed, “What the hell happened here?”

“The body’s been moved,” Abe answered, because there really wasn’t a point in denying it at this point.

“On its own?!”

“No, of course not,” Abe said, only for the implication to hit him. “Unless it did. In which case we’ve got way bigger problems than a simple murder.”

He glanced at the attorney, whose protest was cut short by thunder and the flash of lightning that lit up the window behind them.

“What the hell happened here?”

Abe turned to find the chef had walked into the room.

“The body’s moved!” said the butler.

“On its own?!”

“We haven’t quite ruled that out just yet,” Abe said, only to hear the exasperated sigh of the attorney beside him. “But let’s not forget, we have a murderer we still need to deal with.”

Another round of thunder and lightning must have covered the sound of the next man to enter the room, because Abe didn’t even know he was there until he heard a cry of, “Bully!”

A muffled sound came from the attorney, which they quickly turned into a cough behind their hand.

“Quite a storm out there, eh chaps?” the Colonel asked, grinning as he spotted the attorney’s not very well disguised surprise before turning to the rest of the room. “What are you doing huddled in here in fear?”

Wait, how did someone just sneak up on a werewolf? Even unchanged, Abe knew the attorney’s senses were more than capable of picking up on something like that. He looked from the Colonel to the attorney, too distracted to stop the chef before he answered.

“We have a zombie problem!”

“Ah,” the Colonel said with recognition. “ _Homo necrosis_.”

He turned to meet the chef and the butler’s eyes in turn before locking gazes with Abe as he continued, “The most dangerous game.”

As bizarre and no doubt amusing as it would be to watch how this played out, Abe said, “Mark wasn’t a zombie. I examined his body, thoroughly—”

He chose to ignore the sound from the attorney and keep going.

“And whatever else had been done to it, there were no bite marks, old or new. Mark couldn’t have been turned into a zombie, same as he couldn’t have been a werewolf. Or a vampire for that matter.”

“Technically, you can become a werewolf without ever being bitten,” the attorney said. They coughed again when they found the attention of the whole room on them and added, “At least, that’s just what I’ve heard.”

“Well, whatever he may be now, if someone needs to put the old lad down again, I’m well up for the privilege,” the Colonel said, with a degree of eagerness that was unsettling to say the least.

“What do you mean by ‘again’?” Abe asked. “And what do you mean by ‘privilege’?”

For the first time the Colonel faltered. “Well, I’m just saying, I’ve got plenty of…experience on the matter.”

Chef chimed in, “So do I.”

“That just raises more questions!”

“Well, I’m off to the grounds to see if I can catch a _whiff_ of the old bag of bones, eh?” the Colonel said to the room as though suggesting he were going for a morning stroll before walking out, laughing as though he had just made a joke of some kind.

“Weren’t you and Mark the same age?” Benjamin asked after him, but if the Colonel heard he didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer.

“Alright, I don’t trust him,” Abe said. “Then again, I don’t trust anyone.”

“Wow. Really?” The flat sarcasm in the attorney’s voice made the hunter shrug.

Over his shoulder, he said to the chef and butler, “If this place wasn’t locked down already then it needs to be now. Secure the front gate, I don’t want anyone in or out until we get to the bottom of this!”

Mark already attracted enough paparazzi while he was alive, and they would be here like flies on a horse if word got out. They needed answers before the police arrived, and especially before this story hit the paper.

A missing body. Something clearly unnatural at work here, or someone pretending like there is. Now they were really starting to get into Abe’s wheelhouse, and he knew where to go from here.

“Locks won’t keep people from getting out, sir,” the butler said hesitantly, deflating Abe’s confidence just a touch.

“Locks won’t, but Chef will.”

While the chef straightened his white coat and walked out of the room to do who knows what, Abe forced himself not to vent at the admittedly beautiful and distracting butler and instead turned to Y/N. “Walk with me, partner.”

Once he was sure that they would follow, Abe began to walk through the house, eyes darting to take in each room they passed.

“There’s too much going on here, too many knots in this tangle that just keep getting tighter the harder we pull. Too many chefs in the kitchen, which reminds me—”

Abe detoured into the kitchen, and the attorney raised an eyebrow when he took the spare master key from its hook in the closet.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“We’re going to start at the beginning, get to the ‘why’ of who killed Markiplier. What reason could someone have to kill him, and why last night?”

“From what I understand, last night’s party was the first time Mark has had guests in this house in months,” the attorney said as they followed him through the winding halls and up one of the staircases. “And he didn’t get out much when he wasn’t acting or doing the press circuits. Last night may have been the first time the murderer had access to him.”

Abe paused on the stairs, feeling the jolt in his heart at yet another crack and flash of thunder and lightning. No matter how many times it happened, it still came as a shock.

Turning to face the district attorney, he asked, “But why did he even gather us all together? Why last night? He said we were celebrating something, but not what. It’s almost like this whole shindig of a hootenanny was just a ruse.”

“Did Mark ever need a reason to do something? Maybe he was just ready to move forward with his life again.”

That gave Abe a reason to pause. So they knew there had been something wrong too. Not that Mark ever talked about it, not that he ever got too personal if he could help it. The man held the world at a distance, had done so for as long as Abe had known him.

Abe realized he had started moving again, eyes still going back and forth as he led the way upstairs and around the second floor before going back down again. This house was big, no doubt about it, but if he could just get a feel for the layout, see where someone might be able to stash a body…

“The question we should be asking ourselves is, who stood to gain the most from Mark’s death? No one does what they did to him without having some kind of reason, and I don’t buy for a second that having the wrong card is what did him in. No, the cards, the guns, the bullets, someone had to have planned this all out beforehand.”

“Someone who knew who would be here, who could dig up information on all of the guests to put on those cards.”

Something in their tone made Abe suspect they weren’t just talking about the butler. He turned to face them, the fact that they were once again on yet another set of stairs giving him a nice height advantage.

“What are you thinking, partner?”

“Mark hired you to investigate the chef and the butler, didn’t he? Maybe they weren’t the only ones you looked into?”

They weren’t meeting his eyes, or they weren’t until Abe asked, “How did you know about that?”

Then a pair of far too tired, red-rimmed eyes met his own with an intensity that made him want to take another step up.

“Same way I know no one took the master key from the kitchen last night, not after the chef went to his room. He has a device in his kitchen that keeps watch at night.”

“What are you trying to say?” Abe asked, like he didn’t already know.

“Your story doesn’t add up, Abe, not with everything else we know. We need to find something to prove that you didn’t have anything to do with what happened last night.”

And then he heard it.

The plea in their voice, begging him to give them a reason to trust him. A reason to believe he didn’t kill their friend.


	10. Something in the Air

It took longer than Abe liked to come up with an answer to that. He also didn’t like how he couldn’t blame the attorney for suspecting him, even if his first reaction was to go on the defensive; after all, it’s exactly the same conclusion he would have come to, in their shoes.

“There’s no way in hell that I killed Mark,” Abe said. Realizing that just saying so didn’t mean much, he added, “Look, this master key isn’t the only one in this house, that butler said so earlier. Mark had a copy, but it wasn’t on him when we searched his body this morning. I’m willing to bet anything that whoever has it now is the one who went into my room last night and swapped my bullets for the silver.”

“And what if Mark just left it in his room?”

“Then the murderer must have got in some other way!” Abe shouted, his words temporarily drowned out by the thunder. “Maybe they swiped the nightstand key off of me and returned it before I noticed, or…Or picked the lock, or something. But we’re not going to get anywhere randomly pointing fingers at each other.”

The district attorney looked down and Abe realized he had his finger pointed right at their chest.

“But it’s a place to start,” Abe said, his voice more subdued as he lowered the accusing finger. “I had planned to search Mark’s room anyways. After you.”

He gestured toward the set of double doors ahead and handed them the spare master key, which they took without a word. They unlocked the door and pushed it open, only to stop short. Abe looked in over their shoulder and gave a low whistle.

“Someone really turned this place over, didn’t they?” He brushed by the attorney on his way in and in that moment realized they were standing rigid, unmoving. Like they didn’t even want to be close to him, like they didn’t want to even be in the same room as a possible—

_“Hch!”_

Or like they were holding back an enormous sneeze, blocked by their elbow just in time.

The attorney began to cough as they pulled a handkerchief out of their pocket and pressed it over their mouth and nose. Above the piece of fabric, he could see their eyes begin to water.

“Are you okay?” Abe asked.

“It’s that cologne,” they said, voice muffled by the handkerchief. “God, what is that stuff?!”

“Cologne?” Abe sniffed the air and caught a faint whiff of something floral, but then he wasn’t the one with a werewolf’s nose. “You going to be okay?”

“Y-yeah,” the attorney answered, despite another cough into their handkerchief.

Abe nodded as he looked around the room again. This place looked rough, with blankets flung off of the bed, dirty clothes and books scattered across the floor and random pieces of furniture, and the cushioned bench that once stood at the foot of the bed now lying on its side. But there was enough that wasn’t there to make him say with some confidence, “I don’t think Mark died in here, but we might be able to find something that points to his killer. Look around and see if you can find anything, but be careful. I’ve lost three partners before to bedroom booby traps.”

The attorney’s response was muffled, but their streaming eyes met Abe’s and he looked down at the pair of underwear he had picked up off the floor without thinking and quickly tossed them aside.

“What?” he asked.

“What was on your card? The one you got last night?”

“I got the Hermit, not that it means anything to me,” Abe said with a shrug.

“Your other card.” The attorney didn’t look away as they said, “I know I’m not the only one who had a second card in their envelope. The Colonel’s mentioned an old army buddy, and the Chef’s was about a restaurant he used to work at.”

“Yeah, Easy Pickin’s.” Abe saw the attorney’s eyes narrow and added, “Look, I only know that because Mark asked me to look into him and the butler. I don’t know anything about the Colonel or your friend the mayor—”

“Abe.”

Abe sighed and reached into his jacket before pulling out the card in question. The attorney stepped closer, their eyes scanning the far too long list of names before sighing behind their handkerchief.

“Your partners.”

“Yeah,” Abe said, tucking the card away again. “Every one of them.”

“I’m sorry, Abe.”

“Nah, not like it does me any good to hide what I got.” Probably the opposite, actually, if one of these cards might give some clue as to who sent the things.

“No, not that.” Behind the handkerchief, the attorney’s eyes closed, tightening as he could hear their muffled inhale as though working up to what they were about to say. “Last night…I said something about your old partners, didn’t I? Something about…did something help them…?”

Abe winced, once again unable to look at that black eye opposite him, and really, really hoped they didn’t remember their exact words.

_“Do you always try to talk all of your other partners into running off with you? How did that work out?”_

He knew they probably didn’t mean it like that, that he was just on edge from his card, but even if they had, it didn’t excuse hitting them like that. Abe felt an uncomfortable lurch in his stomach at the memory of just how _angry_ he had been in that moment, the sheer, impetuous rage, especially when he knew no amount of drinking had ever had that kind of effect on him before.

“Yeah, you did. To be fair, we were both drunk—” At their questioning look, Abe reluctantly added, “And I might have said something about a leash just before that.”

_“Abe.”_

“In a totally platonic, not at all kinky way—”

_“Abe!”_

“I just might have referenced the mayor keeping you on a short leash and—"

Really, the pillow they threw into his face shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise as it did.

It might have been a laugh mixed in with that cough, but the attorney turned away before he could tell. Still, at least they didn’t rip out his throat, so that was probably a good sign.

Enough so that Abe risked asking, “You weren’t bitten?”

“What?”

“Earlier, you said something about not all werewolves being turned by a bite.”

The district attorney leaned against the dresser and considered him for a moment before answering. “It’s a long story, but basically it comes down to a curse. Dark magic, probably, but still haven’t figured out exactly which spell. Not as bad as it could be, thanks to an old friend.”

“A curse?” Abe swore and before he could stop himself continued, “You mean I could have been looking for a way to break a curse instead of some kind of—”

He cut himself off, and as muffled as it was, he heard something different in the attorney’s tone when they spoke again.

“…You’ve been looking for a cure for me? Is that what you’ve been doing these past couple of months?”

“I mean, it’s not the only thing…” Abe trailed off. Maybe he had imagined more than once that the next time he saw the attorney, it would be strolling into their office with cure in hand. “But yeah, why not? I seriously doubt you’re okay with staying like this.”

The attorney paused and too late Abe wondered if he had said something, but they just broke into another round of muffled coughing before their shoulders sagged.

“…Thank you, Abe, but I wouldn’t—Don’t go out of your way, okay?”

Abe stared, torn between indignation at the attorney’s words and just how tired they looked as they turned away again, apparently assuming the conversation was just over like that. He had seen them on a case before, relentlessly following up every detail long into the night, not being satisfied until they got to the truth. How could the same person just be so…complacent about their own problems?

Filing that away under something they could argue about later, once the current murdered friend situation was over, Abe decided that for now he would follow their lead and get to searching.

While they went over the frankly ridiculous amount of makeup arranged in front of a set of mirrors, Abe cautiously sorted through the spilled clothes. Most of them appeared to belong to Mark, but he paused at the sight of a woman’s hair clip peeking out from underneath the nightstand. It was brightly colored, the possibly real jewels on it catching the light as he bent down for a closer look.

At a noise from the attorney, he looked up to see that they had made their way to the corner nearest the window, where framed photographs covered a table.

“Did you find something?” he called, and they turned one of the pictures to show the glass in the frame had been smashed, leaving a trail of glass on the table and carpet. Even from here, Abe could recognize the distinctive figure of the Colonel. “Good find, partner.”

Abe looked down again at the hair clip and sniffed it. He swore he could smell the scent that was bothering the attorney so much coming from somewhere around here, but before he could detect the source he was distracted by an unexpected voice.

“You’re quite on the case, aren’t you?”

Abe’s head snapped up to find the Colonel standing in the middle of the room, his back to the hunter as he looked at the attorney.

“Say, hunter, mind if I borrow your friend here?”

Abe thought fast. The attorney had already mentioned something about getting the Colonel to tell them about his card, and he seemed more talkative than usual around them. Maybe they could get some more information out of him, even keep him distracted long enough for Abe to check out his room.

Not to mention it wouldn’t hurt the attorney to get out of this room, judging by the color of their face behind that handkerchief or their still watering eyes.

“Sure. Don’t worry, partner, I’ll handle it from here.”

“Bully. Take a walk with me!”

The Colonel’s voice faded into the distance, followed by the attorney’s muffled coughing.

Really, what was it about this cologne that bothered them so much?

Abe sniffed the hair clip again and realized that one end of it was wet. On a hunch, he got down on his hands and knees and spotted the dark stain beneath the nightstand and the glint of the bottle that had rolled underneath it. The space was tight enough that he could barely touch it with the tips of his fingers, but with a bit of scrabbling he managed to pull out a nearly empty bottle of cologne whose top must have knocked loose with the fall.

Even sniffing the bottle with the stuff all over his hands, Abe thought it wasn’t that much stronger than most other colognes, although he still couldn’t place the scent. With a name like “That Night” not offering much in the way of explaining, he turned the bottle over and scanned the contents. Most of the stuff was chemical nonsense he didn’t know anything about, but one name stuck out in particular: aconite.

Also known as wolfsbane.

“What the hell?”

Who used a poisonous plant in a cologne? Granted, you weren’t supposed to drink the stuff, but still. Swearing under his breath, Abe went into the bathroom and dropped the bottle on the counter before he began scrubbing his hands and arms with soap and water.

Why didn’t he tell the attorney to wait outside? He could see that the smell was getting to them, and there was no telling what that cologne had been doing to their lungs.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

Not like they would have listened. They were stubborn, and determined to find the truth even if they were clearly still grieving and in shock about all of this, and they wanted to believe Abe was innocent, he could see it in their eyes even as they pulled his own story on him, and they would keep digging down into the heart of this whole terrible, messed up situation, even if they didn’t like what they might find, and God if all of that didn’t make him—

Abe caught the reflection of his eyes in the mirror and saw the flush creeping under his skin in combination with the heat rising at his train of thought. Very glad that the attorney wasn’t here right now, he splashed some water in his face and around his neck before he turned off the faucet and began to aggressively dry his hands.

Besides, this was clearly Mark’s fault, or whoever bought him the stupid cologne in the first place. Vaguely remembering Mark saying something about the cologne being a gift last night, Abe happily turned his frustration and guilt on the unknown giver and tossed the hand towel down on the counter.

Where it landed next to a key, identical to the spare master key from downstairs. The key his partner used to unlock this room, and had just walked away with in their pocket. The key that would have proved Abe’s innocence, if he could have just found it in literally any other room in the house.

“Well, shit.”


	11. About Dave

“I thought that it was about time that we got to _know_ each other,” the Colonel said as he led the way out of Mark’s bedroom.

You weren’t eager to follow him, even if it did mean you could get away from that godawful cologne that filled the air in the room. There was something about the way he spoke now, his deep voice hitting on just the right words to suggest a threat—or maybe because this was the second or third time he had completely taken you by surprise by somehow entering a room without you or seemingly anyone else noticing.

“Some place far, far away from the prying eyes of…anyone else.”

No, it definitely had something to do with his choice of words.

The Colonel turned to look at you with those last words, his expression hidden by the shadow in the hallway before he gestured and said, “Come with me.”

He walked to a nearby set of doors and opened them, revealing the stone patio that ran around the house and the still gray, overcast sky above.

“Wait,” you said, stopping short. “Weren’t we just on the second–?”

“Bit of fresh air will do us both some good,” the Colonel said, and indeed he did sound far more relaxed out here as he turned once again to face you, walking backwards with confidence. “That room didn’t take well with you, did it?”

You realized you still had your handkerchief pressed to your face and cautiously lowered it. You did catch a whiff of fresh air, but it was marred by the scent of copper, and when you looked down at the handkerchief you realized it was stained red.

“Oh dear, that won’t do,” the Colonel said when he spotted the blood on your face. “Be right back.”

“It’s fine, I think my nose stopped—”

You didn’t even get to finish your sentence before he was back again, wet rag in one hand and a napkin bearing food in the other.

“Wh—how did you—”

“Just nipped into the kitchen while the Chef was distracted.”

That…didn’t answer your question at all, but you took the offered rag and used it to clean your face off. It couldn’t do much for your raw and sore throat, but some fresh air would help.

“What is it you wanted to talk about?” you asked once the Colonel led you to a bench near a stone pool.

“You and the mayor know each other, don’t you?” he asked. “Damien was quite worried when he saw you and the hunter missed breakfast—or technically lunch I suppose, so I thought I’d bring you a bite to eat. Busy sniffing out clues no doubt, although I think you might have overdone it.”

He handed you the napkin, on which was piled up a couple of large, fluffy biscuits. Biscuits which, upon closer inspection, at one time contained sausage.

The Colonel shrugged at your accusing look and said, “Food delivery tax, I don’t make the rules.”

“Thank you,” you said all the same before taking a bite out of one of the biscuits, unable to hide your delight. It was so good, only marred slightly by the realization that no one bothered to tell you and Abe about the food. You didn’t think it had been that long since you saw the Chef at work in the kitchen, but with one thing after the other you wouldn’t be surprised to learn you had completely lost all track of time.

“Yes, well, that silver did make it hard for you to enjoy last night’s meal, no need for you to miss another.”

The Colonel gave you a hearty thump on the back when you nearly choked on your biscuit, and waited patiently for you to stop coughing.

“You…I mean, I don’t…what?”

“Well, it’s rather obvious that you’re a werewolf, isn’t it? Not sure how anyone could have missed it.”

“Would you—lower your voice, please?” Your already strained throat made your plea into a whisper as you looked around to make sure you two were really alone before trying, “And where would you get that idea, I’m not a…”

Behind the Colonel’s tinted glasses, you could see his eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, really? My mistake, say, you wouldn’t mind holding this silver medal for me, would you, the clasp is a bit—”

He reached for one of the many medals on his jacket, only to wink when he saw you flinch.

“Wish I could have been as good at calling your bluffs last night at the poker table,” he said. “Now now, don’t give me that look. I’m not here to scare you or tell anyone—quite the contrary!”

The Colonel fully turned toward you, one leg resting on the empty space of the bench in between you, and there was an earnestness in his voice as he leaned forward and said, “I promise you, I didn’t know anything about those silver bullets or that silly card until this morning, and I would certainly never shoot anyone just because they happened to be a werewolf!”

“Will you just—shush!” Heart hammering, you stared at the Colonel and tried to process what he was saying. “Why are you telling me this? What do you want?”

“Want?” The Colonel seemed surprised by the question, and in a slightly lower voice said, “I just wanted to let you know…Well, that I wouldn’t hurt you or anyone else without a good reason for it, I suppose. I mean, I’m the last person who should be waving guns at people just because they’re not, strictly speaking, human.”

“That’s…great?” You stared at the Colonel, who was becoming harder to understand by the second, and tried for a joke. “I guess you don’t include the undead in that, huh?”

“Yes, well, about that.” The Colonel looked away, staring at the small false waterfall that fed into the pool as he said, “While we’re talking about potentially ruinous secrets, there is something I should…come clean about. I thought you might have already noticed, but perhaps not?”

He looked to you for confirmation, but by this point you were well past the point of guessing.

“I may not have told you the whole story, about Dave. Do you remember him?”

“He’s the soldier you told me about, died from blood loss.”

He was also the name on the Colonel’s second card.

“Yes. We were separated from the rest of our troop you see, ambush caught us unaware on the way back to camp, chaos, undead, running for our lives, the usual story. We still thought horses were a good idea at the time, which they were for most things until something’s trying to take a bite out of them. Poor Dave was thrown right off, and I was the only one to see.”

The Colonel sighed.

“Ran to help him, of course, he would have done the same thing for me. Had to carry him on my back, but I couldn’t just leave him there, and I had seen an abandoned building on our expedition that wasn’t far away. To look at us, we were really behind the eight ball, but all we had to do was last until the troops sent scouts out looking for us. I patched up Dave as best I could, told him he was a lucky man. Why, he had been in the middle of a horde when I picked him up, and he didn’t even have a single bite on him.” The Colonel unbuttoned and rolled up the sleeve of his jacket, revealing a set of undeniable scars, deep and vivid against his skin despite having healed over. “Which is more than I could say for myself, as it turns out.”

He held the arm out for your inspection, and you reluctantly ran your fingers over the scars, feeling the tight knit of the badly healed bite marks.

“But you don’t…you don’t _smell_ —”

You paused and the Colonel smiled.

You had come across dead bodies before, you knew what death smelled like. You knew the stench of rotten meat, the decay that followed dead and undead alike. But the Colonel, he smelled…human, minus a faint whiff of something dry, like old paper.

“Plus, zombies don’t carry on conversations, they don’t just show up for parties and get seriously drunk or just carry on like nothing happened!”

“Your average _homo necrosis_ , no, they’re just an appetite on legs, all they know is eating and spreading to others.” The Colonel withdrew his arm and unrolled his sleeve, covering the scars once again. “I’m more of what you would call a smart zombie, _homeosapeo zombifus_ if you will. I’ve found that as long as I keep up a steady diet of meat, I don’t seem to get any worse.”

You looked at your half-eaten and until now forgotten biscuit and the missing meat. That would explain why the Colonel was raiding the fridge last night, although that opened up even more questions.

“How much meat? And is there a particular…”

“Oh, I usually round up enough on my hunting trips to tide me over for a while.” The Colonel nudged you with his elbow as if sharing a joke. “Haven’t had to resort to anything humanish yet, if you’re worried about that.”

“…Colonel, what happened to Dave?”

His smile fell and the Colonel stilled, his fingers locking together. “Right. Dave. Well, I didn’t tell him of course. I thought, at the time, that if I stayed I could protect him long enough for help to come and then, well, ask one of the others to take care of it. Maybe use what time I had left to write a few letters, see if they could send those back home for me.” The Colonel shrugged, as if such thoughts were part of normal life, and admitted, “I never sent those letters, of course. Didn’t even finish the first one before we realized Dave was in worse shape than we thought. I tried, I really did, but within a few hours he was just gone.”

The Colonel took a sharp breath and exhaled before continuing. “It just didn’t make any sense, it wasn’t fair, I was the one bitten, but he…And I remember thinking it was all mad anyways, so why not a little more? Why not give Dave even just a few more minutes, if it meant maybe he could—could write one last letter, have at least that much too.”

A chill settled in your spine that had nothing to do with the shadow of the house that you two sat in, or the waiting storm overhead.

“You turned him into a zombie.”

The Colonel shook his head. “No. Turns out, once someone is dead, even a bite from an infected won’t bring them back. Or maybe I just don’t have what it takes to spread it, I don’t know. Either way, I buried what was left of Dave behind the building the next morning, marked it with a sign so someone would know who was there and just…waited, thinking I knew how my story would end. Only it didn’t.”

You and the Colonel sat in silence for some time while you tried to take all of this in. All of this hidden behind the caricature of a boisterous blowhard of a man.

The Colonel broke the silence first.

“Please don’t tell Damien.”

“What? He doesn’t know?” You weren’t sure why that surprised you so much, beyond just knowing that the two were close friends.

“When did you decide to tell him about yourself?” the Colonel asked.

“…It’s more like he found out by accident,” you admitted, and the Colonel nodded knowingly.

“There’s never really a good time to tell someone, is there? No, you’re only the second person I’ve told—I guess we both needed someone to keep us this side of sane. I had hoped she would help me find a cure before it ever became an issue but…” The Colonel chuckled, but he didn’t sound happy. “As if it wasn’t bad enough, there’s a missing body on top of a murder, so if your hunter friend finds out…”

“Then why tell me?” you asked. “I didn’t notice, and you can’t know I won’t tell someone else.”

“Because I want you to believe me,” the Colonel said, his usual force returning with his words. “I didn’t bite Mark, I have nothing to do with his missing body, and I didn’t put those silver bullets in my gun!”

He rose to his feet and walked a short distance away, hand uselessly flailing against the wind with his words. You stood up as well and followed after, finally managing to get a hand on his shoulder and his attention.

“Colonel—Colonel, listen, I know you didn’t bite Mark. Abe even said there weren’t any bite marks, remember? And…and I won’t tell anyone what you told me, not unless you make me.”

Knowing that he could just as easily turn around and tell everyone you were a werewolf made that promise a lot easier, but at the same time you also knew far too well what it was like to live in fear to dismiss how hard it must have been for him to tell you all of this. That didn’t mean you had to trust him completely, but as long as you didn’t have a reason to believe he was an immediate danger to anyone…

Showing that he was still completely capable of taking you by surprise, the Colonel spun around and pulled you into a bear hug that briefly made your feet lose touch with the ground.

“Please stop crushing the lawyer,” you gasped out.

“Sorry, sorry.” He abruptly dropped you and tousled your hair before his attention shifted. “Oh, the pool hasn’t aged a day! Did I bring my bathing outfit?”

And just like that he was gone, switching gears just as rapidly as he had the night before, as though he didn’t have a single care in the world.

If only it were that easy.


	12. Just Missed Him

“Geronimo!”

He must have left your sight for only a second, but at his shout you had a brief glimpse of the man dressed in a frankly ridiculous red and white striped bathing costume and a straw hat that he could not have possibly had enough time to change into before he jumped into the pool.

You didn’t even know where to start figuring that one out before you heard a voice behind you.

“Y/N? Have you seen the Colonel?”

Damien stepped from around the corner of the building with his question, his eyes briefly meeting yours before he peered around, clearly distracted.

“He…” You glanced over your shoulder at the pool, but the only sign that he had ever been there was the straw hat floating on the surface with not even a shadow under the water to hint at its owner. “He was just here…”

“I thought I heard him,” Damien said, unable to hide his disappointment or his distraction as he ran a hand through his hair and continued to gaze around as though sure the Colonel might pop up at any moment.

Which, considering what you had seen so far, wasn’t hard to imagine…

“I need to speak with him,” Damien said, hands anxiously shifting their grip on his cane as he spoke. “I may have been a little short at our last encounter and…”

He sighed. “Well, if you do see him, let me know.”

Without waiting for an answer, Damien turned and walked away.

“Bully!”

The Colonel surfaced from the pool, drenched and arms stretched out as he shouted the word as though proud of himself for managing to hold his breath for so long.

You looked back to where Damien had just been a second ago, sure that he must have heard that, but there was no sign of the mayor.

“Damien? What—where did he—where did _you_ go?” you asked, spinning back toward the pool only to find it empty once again.

“Life needs a bit of madness, eh chap?”

The Colonel stood beside you, back in his pristine and not even a bit damp military uniform without a wet hair on him.

“How do you keep doing that?” you asked, trying to keep up with the Colonel as he was already walking away again.

“Doing what?” the Colonel asked as he passed a fountain on his way toward the stone steps that led to the grounds below.

“The—the…” You trailed off, unsure how to put it into words without sounding crazy.

The Colonel winked at you knowingly and said, “Now, back to the grisly business inside. I’m sure I’m not the first to say that our host had a great deal of enemies as of late.”

“Mark wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, that’s true,” you admitted. He had left more than his fair share of rivals and critics in his wake with his sometimes-single-minded determination to become an actor. “But enemies?”

“Someone thought ill enough of him to send him a death card with his name on it,” the Colonel pointed out. “No offense to yourself, of course.”

You didn’t have an answer ready for that. Of course, you hadn’t made very many friends on your way to becoming district attorney, either.

“My prying eye might suspect that the people who worked for him might have had reason to stab him in the back,” the Colonel said, with a gesture to illustrate his point. His eyes drifted away from your face as he added softly, “God knows he’s a tough son of a bitch to work for.”

You stared at the Colonel’s back as he looked over the grounds. “Wait, did you—”

“Oh, the old golf course!” The Colonel turned toward you with a smile. “I’ll fetch my clubs!”

“Wait!”

But he was already charging down the stone steps, one hand to his pith helmet to keep it in place as he ran out onto the green.

“Colonel?” The hopeful tone in Damien’s voice gave way to a muttered swear when he saw that you were once again alone. “I thought I heard him.”

“He was just here,” you protested, turning toward the winding golf course down below and failing to see any sign of the uniformed figure. “How does he keep doing that?! And earlier, you just round a corner and disappear? I don’t—”

“Y/N?”

You could hear the concern in Damien’s voice as you pinched the bridge of your nose and sighed. “This place doesn’t make any sense!”

“My friend, what happened to your nose?”

You opened your eyes to see Damien, closer now as he looked at your face with concern.

“Just a nosebleed,” you answered quickly, already pulling the still damp rag the Colonel had given you earlier from where you had halfway stuck it into your pocket. Leaving a wet spot on the side of your heavily wrinkled from having slept in them pants, as if you didn’t already look and feel like a wreck. “I must have missed a spot…”

“Let me,” Damien said, already pulling the spotted rag from your hand before you could argue. You leaned back against the stone railing while he gently wiped at your face, the rag pausing near the corner of your mouth as his concerned eyes met your own. “Are you okay? Is this why you weren’t at the table earlier?”

“No, Abe and I were looking around and must have missed that breakfast was ready,” you said, and caught the annoyance that flickered though your friend’s eyes as he lowered the rag. “The Colonel brought me some food though.”

You held up the hastily wrapped biscuits as proof, which you had barely touched while being distracted by the Colonel’s story.

“Yes, I spoke with the hunter,” Damien said, his tone surprising you.

“Did something happen?” you asked.

“No, we just had a little…talk,” Damien answered, looking away. “Y/N, when is the last time you ate?”

“Right now,” you said, pulling a piece off of one of the biscuits and popping it into your mouth. “But only if you tell me what’s going on with you and Abe.”

“There is nothing—” Damien stopped short at your expression and started again. “I know that you have been assisting our…intrepid ‘detective’ with his investigation, but I have to bring some concerns of mine to the forefront.”

You finished off a biscuit, using it as an excuse to consider where this might be going before you said, “Of course, Damien. What’s wrong?”

“If we look at the situation logically, we can only assume that the killer who struck down our dear friend Mark was with us last night. There has been no sign that anyone forced their way into the house, and you surely would have picked up the smell of someone else within those walls.”

You nodded. You had been over every floor with Abe in that little trek earlier, and there was no scent in there of anyone other than Mark, the two servants, and the three other guests besides yourself. Even if the butler had cleaned the whole place in the early hours of the morning, you should have been able to pick up the scent of someone before that cologne in Mark’s room took a wrecking ball to your sinuses.

“And we even know that the murder weapon must have included one of two guns, possessed either by the Colonel or the hunter,” Damien pressed on. “And while I would stake my life on the innocence of the Colonel or yourself, can we really say the same of the hunter?”

“Anyone could have used one of those guns last night,” you pointed out.

“But it would have been significantly easier for the person who brought not only the gun, but the silver bullet that pierced Mark’s heart,” Damien said. “Y/N, the man may hunt monsters, but not all of those monsters appear so different from ourselves, as you well know. Who’s to say that he did not see a monster in Mark where there was none, and took it upon himself to slay an imaginary beast?”

“Damien, please, we can’t just assume—”

“Who else could have known?” Damien interrupted. “Who else could have sent those cards, who could have known to send you _that_ card?”

“He didn’t even know I would be here tonight!”

“So he claims. But how hard would it have been to find out beforehand?”

Abe had been here just a few nights ago, looking into Mark’s employees. The thought had crossed your mind that Mark may have asked the hunter to look into more than just his chef and butler, and now Damien must have seen the uncertainty in your expression.

“Y/N, can you honestly tell me he wouldn’t have it in him to kill someone?”

“He didn’t shoot me,” you said, softly. “He had the chance, he didn’t even know who I was, but he let the wolf go.”

“But now he does know and I just—” Damien’s hand was tight around his cane as he gestured, seeking the words that eluded him until he finally said, “I just don’t want to lose another friend.”

“Damien?” You straightened up, setting aside your napkin on the railing when you saw the mistiness in his eyes. “No, you’re not…Come here.”

You pulled him into a hug, felt his fingers grip tight to the back of your shirt as he pulled you close to his shaking chest.

“I just keep thinking about those cards, someone sent those, they sent both of you a death card and then Mark is just—he’s just dead, and it could have been you too, it could still be—”

“Shhh.” You shushed him gently, hand rubbing his back as you let him cry into your shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere, Damien, not until we find out what’s going on here. I promise.”

You don’t know how long the two of you stood there like that before Damien’s hands found their way to your shoulders, pulling you back so that he could look you in the eye as he added, “And I promise, I’m not leaving here without you. I will not stand by and let another one of my friends come to harm. If, somewhere in the shadow of this manor, there is a murderer, then—”

Damien’s declaration was cut short by a blast of thunder that accompanied a far more disturbing sound from within the house: a gunshot and the crash of something breaking, followed by muffled voices raised in argument.

Damien glanced at you and took off running toward the house, but his shout for you to stay behind fell on deaf ears as you followed on his heels, determined to see what had happened.

You had to know, to find some kind of answer to what was going on here. For Damien’s sake, for Abe’s, and for your own.


	13. A Debt to Pay

Okay.

Abe stared down at the master key in his hand.

He could figure this out.

There were only two keys in the house that could be used to enter his room last night and get to his gun to switch out the bullets, not including the nightstand key he had kept on his person all night. So two possible keys to prove he hadn’t changed the bullets himself. Two potential alibis to prove his innocence.

One key that, according to the District Attorney, never left the kitchen last night, and the other one he just found in the until recently locked room of a dead man.

Right.

“What are you doing in Master Mark’s bedroom?”

Abe hadn’t even heard the butler walk into the room, but dear god was he grateful for a reason to be angry and distracted right now.

“Me? What do you think I’m doing, I’m looking for clues to figure out who killed Mark! What are you doing in here?”

Benjamin took a step back, one gloved hand to his chest. “Well, I just happened to notice the door was open and—”

“Oh, just happened to notice? Tell me, did you just _happen_ to notice if Mark or anyone else was in this room last night?”

“W-well, no, I assumed Mark had retired to his room at some point, and he is a very private person so it didn’t seem wise to bother him—”

“Didn’t seem wise to do your job and check in on the man, see if he needed a nightcap or…” Abe trailed off, unsure exactly what the butler’s job around here was besides mercilessly cleaning every surface he could get his gloved hands on.

“I doubt anyone needed a nightcap after last night’s party,” Benjamin said, but his eyes were down, somber as he considered Abe’s words. “Perhaps I should have checked in on Mark last night. I had noticed he has been rather…out of spirits lately, but I had hoped last night’s party would have alleviated that.”

There it was, the edge of something bigger, a stray thread Abe could pick at.

“Yeah, the chef mentioned before that Mark hadn’t been leaving his room much.” Abe glanced around the room, which showed every sign of being lived in for far too many hours a day. “And I’m guessing he didn’t let you in to clean very often.”

Benjamin followed his gaze and shuddered at the state of the room. “No. I did offer, but he hasn’t let anyone in here in months. There were stretches, days or even weeks at a time when we never even saw him. He just had me leave his meals outside the door, and then I spent the rest of the time cleaning because when Master Mark did come down, he…well, it was best to keep him happy.”

“You’ve been working for Mark for less than a year now, right? Why stay, if it was that bad?”

“How did you know how long I’ve been working here?” Benjamin asked.

Yeah, probably not best to admit his employer had asked Abe to dig up dirt on the man.

“Chef mentioned it, same as he said you and him both owed Mark a lot.” Well, the chef could have mentioned it, and Abe suspected that if Chef’s card was about that not necessarily legal restaurant he used to work at, then he could take a guess at what had been on the butler’s card. “How much did it cost Mark, to pay off your debts?”

“He told you about that?” Benjamin asked, aghast, and when the hunter shrugged his shoulders sagged downward. “I…I couldn’t leave, not after everything Mark did for me. If he hadn’t stepped in, I would be…”

Benjamin shuddered, and after a moment of hesitation pulled his pristine and unbent card out of his pocket to show to Abe.

Typed on it were the words, _“The Summer Court recalls all debts eventually.”_

That made Abe do more than just pause. “Wait, the Summer Court? As in actual f—”

“Shush! No! Don’t…don’t say that word.” The butler looked so pale that Abe thought he might actually pass out in front of him.

“Right. But you’re seriously telling me you were enough of a fool to get into some kind of deal with the Fair Folk?”

“It wasn’t my choice!” Benjamin protested. “My business partner never told me where the money came from, not until after our company tanked and _they_ came to take him away! They would have taken me too, if Mark hadn’t stepped in and made a deal to pay off my half of the debt.”

Abe stared at the man, letting that information settle. Mark had told him off the bat about the butler having some debt issues, told him to ignore that in favor of seeing if there was anything else to worry about. Not that there had been, the man was as squeaky clean as everything else he touched as far as Abe could tell, and Mark had seemed satisfied enough with that answer. There definitely hadn’t been anything to suggest he was enough of a fool to fall into a deal with the fae, aka elves, fairies, and everything else included in terms like the “wee folk” and “good folk” when people were afraid of catching the attention of fickle beings who were just as likely to bewitch a fool as help him out depending on their current mood.

The basic rule for dealing with one of the fae, beyond never, ever giving them your name, was to just don’t. Avoid them, don’t get caught up in their twisting word games, and try not to disrespect one by accident, which could be harder than it sounded, and maybe they would return the favor and leave you alone.

And this guy’s partner went and borrowed money from them?

“Could one of them have had a grudge against Mark? For getting you out of your debt?” Abe asked.

Benjamin shook his head. “They just want back what’s theirs. It would be different if I had known about the deal and signed the contract myself, but as it stands now, they were happy with the arrangement Mark made to pay them on my behalf.”

“Probably didn’t hurt they nabbed your partner as an advance,” Abe said. “Not that you seem too broken up about it.”

Benjamin sighed. “Trusting him was a mistake, for many reasons. In the end, he tried to put me up for collateral, but the—the lending party held him to his word and took him instead. His other…less than ethical dealings didn’t help our business in the end, either. I’m afraid I don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to trusting other people.”

Abe barely kept himself from nodding in sympathy. He knew too well what that was like. Besides, Mark’s death didn’t have the same kind of feel as the luckily few cases he had involving those people, minus the missing body. It’s not like they were the kind of people to get impatient so long as he had been keeping to their deal, at least not by the regular human standard of time.

“How did you feel, having to work for Mark to pay off a debt someone else landed you in?” Abe asked. “Resentful? Angry, even? Maybe enough to consider another way out?”

The butler shook his head, his mournful words completely missing the bait as he said, “No, I owed everything to Mark. We were friends before all this, but I never imagined he would do so much for me. And now that he’s gone, I don’t…I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

His voice cracked, and to Abe’s horror he saw genuine tears welling up in the butler’s eyes.

“Could you—could you give me a minute?”

“Y-yeah, sure buddy,” Abe said, already backing out of the room. He was many things, but a comforter of people in distress was not one of them. “Just, uh, don’t touch anything that might be a clue, and, uh—”

A wail broke out from the butler as he picked up one of Mark’s pillows, his words about his master’s room lost in the sound before Abe shut the door behind him. The solid wood door did its part to muffle the noise, at least.

Outside in the relative quiet of the hallway, the hunter pulled off his hat and ran a hand over his face, wishing he could shake off the headache forming in the back of his skull.

Okay, he could probably put the butler down at the bottom of the list for potential suspects, if only because Mark’s death certainly wasn’t doing him any favors. The Chef, despite every warning sign about his behavior that suggested “potential killer,” was right there with him. They just didn’t have enough to gain from killing their employer, or at least they could have done it any other time when there wasn’t a party of potential witnesses. From everything Abe had seen and heard, they could have killed Mark in full confidence that it would have taken days if not weeks or months for anyone outside of the house to notice.

With no sign that anyone else had entered the house last night, that left the party guests as the most likely suspects: the District Attorney, the Mayor, the Colonel, and himself.

Abe looked at the line of doors opposite the balcony, each one leading to a guest bedroom, and then down at the master key still in his hand.

Well, just because he couldn’t use it to prove his innocence like he hoped, it didn’t mean Abe couldn’t use the key to get closer to finding the real killer in this case.

Starting with checking his own room first.


	14. The Whole Trust Thing

Some disheveled sheets, a more or less empty glass on the nightstand, a few paper wards tossed around out of habit more than anything at this point. Just the way Abe left the room this morning, but he still scanned the room for anything out of place, anything to suggest someone else might have been in the room last night.

There weren’t any of the usual telltale signs that anyone had tampered with the nightstand, which when locked refused to open despite Abe’s best efforts to jiggle the lock or knock the drawer loose, not without the nightstand key or one of the master keys.

He slammed his hand down on top of the nightstand, once, twice, three times until his palm burned. He needed the attorney, they could just _smell_ that someone else had been here, although at this point Abe wouldn’t be surprised if even that turned back on him.

One of the paper wards fluttered off of the nightstand and he bent down with a sigh to pick it up, only to freeze halfway. The paper had landed face down, revealing that the back of the once white paper was now yellowed around its edge, tinting towards brown and even dusty gray in the center behind the words of protection. Like someone had held it over a candle, just short of letting it burn through completely. He picked it up and sniffed the paper, but there wasn’t a smell, not even a whiff of smoke.

A quick check confirmed that the wards placed at the head of his bed, the window, and near both the bathroom and bedroom doors had all been affected in the same way. They weren’t particularly strong wards, not something Abe would have used on an active hunt, but it was enough.

Someone—or something—had been in this room last night. With enough evil intention to confirm Abe’s suspicion that he was being set up to take the fall, or at least divert attention from what was really going on here.

Between this knowledge and having the gall to give him a card to remind him of his dead partners, it was like the person behind this was trying to get Abe to come after them with everything he had.

If that was the case, then challenge accepted.

The Colonel’s room was next to be searched, which proved to be nearly identical to his own in layout, although a chair had been moved toward the window, perhaps for the better light it offered. The covers on the bed itself had been moved slightly, the kind of movement that suggested someone sat on the edge at one point, but a peek at the neat, crisp sheets underneath confirmed Abe’s suspicion that no one had actually slept in it. The hunter checked the closet and bathroom, but there were no personal affects lying around. Now that he thought about it, both the Colonel and the DA had arrived at the door without any sort of overnight bags.

Knowing the little he did about the attorney, he wondered if one or both of them had purposefully done so, as a potential excuse to duck out early instead of spending the night.

Abe sighed as he walked out of the bathroom, sensing another dead end, only to stop short when he spotted the small metal trash can by the nightstand. Empty, except for a thin layer of roughly and hastily torn pieces of paper at the bottom.

Benjamin, going by his cleaning spree this morning, probably would have been around to clean out the guest rooms’ trash this morning if he hadn’t been more worried about disturbing the guests. That plus the whole “dead boss” distraction meant Abe was now kneeling in front of the bin, carefully moving the small scraps of paper around with the tip of his index finger.

Most of the words were torn or too scattered to make sense of any kind of connection, besides the fact that they were all written in the same looping cursive, although one larger piece in particular caught Abe’s eye:

_“go to the party”_

On another, he found a dash next to a large “ _C,_ ” which he assumed stood for Colonel.

Abe hesitated. He wanted to know what this letter had said, but he didn’t have time to rearrange it here, and trying to stuff all of the scraps in one of his pockets could lead to missing pieces or worse, the Colonel noticing and using it against him. Better to come back with the DA as a witness, if only to keep them from having yet another reason to suspect him.

The next room down belonged to the Mayor, who appeared to have taken the time to neatly make his bed before sitting down with a stack of papers on his room’s desk. Abe took a hasty flip through these, but aside from the outline for an upcoming speech and reports related to events taking place later in the week, there wasn’t much there. Nothing incriminating, at least.

After a quick check of the Mayor’s closet that proved the man had brought exactly zero casual clothes for the weekend, Abe reluctantly moved on to the last guest bedroom.

The district attorney hadn’t even bothered to lock the door behind them, and a first scan of the room showed no personal items or anything worth hiding aside from their jacket, left hanging on the back of a chair. That is, until Abe walked over to the bed and pulled back the rumpled cover.

Wolf hairs.

The DA changed? When did that happen?

Abe glanced at the door and back down at the dark hairs, very visible and noticeable against the white sheets. If the butler came around to change the sheets, he would be sure to notice, and with that werewolf card floating around…

Without even realizing what he was doing, Abe threw back the cover and hastily brushed all of the hairs together with his hand, forming a small ball of fluff that he had no idea what to do with. Flush it down the toilet, maybe?

…Did this count as hiding evidence? What was he even doing, he should be asking the DA—

“What are you doing in here?”

The mayor stood at the door to the bedroom, his accusing stare only growing harder as Abe instinctively put his hand behind his back, sticking the furball in his back pocket to deal with later.

“Trying to find a killer,” Abe answered.

Always best not to beat around the bush in this kind of situation.

“In the district attorney’s bedroom?” the mayor asked. “Does Y/N know you’re in here?”

“They know I planned to search every room of this house.” Although Abe suspected the attorney would have preferred to be with him while said searching was going on. “What with the whole missing body situation.”

“The what?!”

Oh, right. Damien wasn’t there for that particular revelation. Then again, Abe didn’t see how it was his fault none of the others bothered to let him in on the situation.

“Mark’s body isn’t where we left it. Not only did someone up and kill him, they’ve gone and moved the body. I don’t suppose you have any suspicions on why that would be?”

Damien’s eyes narrowed. “If I had to guess, perhaps someone wished to dispose of any evidence that might point toward the killer. After all, only one of us has spent any significant amount of time examining Mark’s body. Without it, we would only have your word to rely on, wouldn’t we?”

Great. Just another way he was apparently being strung up to take the fall here, like a poorly tied up pinata.

And the mayor had the same look in his eye as a kid with a big stick and some anger issues to work out in the name of free candy.

“Well, as you can clearly see, there is no dead body in this room. So again, what are you doing in Y/N’s room?”

Abe crossed his arms across his chest and met the mayor’s stare. “Like I said, I’m checking the entire house. I can’t just skip someone’s room because you might have a problem with it, _sir_.”

“Yes, it would be a _shame_ if you somehow missed the opportunity to make yet another baseless accusation against someone,” Damien answered, sarcasm dripping from his words. “Tell me, why exactly would Y/N have killed Mark?”

“The werewolf card.” The answer came quickly, before Abe could even realize he should try to stop it.

Damien stared at him for a moment before fully stepping into the room and shutting the door behind him. In the next second, he was inches away from Abe, both hands tight around his cane as though he wished it were the hunter’s neck as he hissed out the words, “You and I both know why that’s not the case, _hunter_.”

“Mark was Y/N’s friend, one of their few friends apparently,” Abe said, and the mayor made no move to discredit the idea. “But last night, some asshole with a vendetta sends everyone here a card that happens to reveal something that they’d rather not discuss with anyone else at the table. Somehow, Mark accidentally walks away with Y/N’s card and finds out they’re a werewolf. He doesn’t take it well, because when has Mark ever taken anything well, and he steals a gun and the silver bullets, then goes up to the DA’s room and tried to shoot them, but in the struggle—”

“Mark would never!” The mayor’s face changed drastically with his indignation at the very idea. “Even if that were true, one of us would have heard—”

“He could have lured them downstairs, or outside, and then the DA did what they could to hide how and where he died. Or maybe they realized their card was gone, that Mark would find out and, afraid that he would reveal it to the world, did what they had to do to keep him quiet, using the silver bullets as a blind to keep you or I from suspecting—”

“Y/N wouldn’t do that!” There was a plea in Damien’s voice, a call for the hunter to see reason. “Think about what you’re suggesting, they wouldn’t—they would never—”

“I am thinking, and unlike you I know better than to let my feelings get in the way. I haven’t even touched on the Colonel or the fact that he, I don’t know, _also_ had a gun loaded with silver? Meanwhile, you trust your friends to the point you can’t bring yourself to doubt them for even a moment.”

Abe prodded the mayor in the chest as he spoke, only to get pushed back.

“Some people might consider that a virtue,” the mayor replied. “I know Y/N and the Colonel; I trust them not to hide anything from me. What’s wrong with believing that my friends aren’t mur—killers?”

“I don’t know, maybe the fact that I seriously doubt that whole trust thing goes both ways.”

Damien stilled, staring at the hunter suspiciously. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“There’s nothing you wouldn’t tell them? Nothing you might keep close to your chest?” Abe prodded the mayor again and was rewarded with the feel of the cards tucked in the man’s chest pocket.

Damien frowned and took a step back. “No, of course not. The Colonel’s known me almost as long as my sister has, and as Mayor, it is my duty to work closely with the District Attorney’s office so I can’t…”

“Yeah, I get it. I mean, it makes sense a mayor with a very recent and public werewolf problem would want to set up a deal with a prominent hunter family like the Bronsons. Little less sense when you find out he’s knowingly harboring a werewolf in the city. How’d the DA react to that news?”

Damien’s expression gave away what Abe already suspected.

“…Oh. You haven’t told them. Guess that trust only goes one-way, huh?”

“How did you—Who told you?”

Abe shrugged. “You were sitting next to me at the table last night when we all got our cards. I peeked.”

There had only been the name, but every hunter worth his salt knew of the family. The name alone went a long way within his circles. But not one you expected to need in a city that supposedly had the walls and the wards to keep the riffraff out.

Damien sputtered for a moment before managing to get out the words, “You don’t understand. They have connections, they’re looking for cures, for long-term integration efforts—”

“And I suppose they just need a little political help getting that wheel turning, huh?” Abe said and the mayor scowled.

“This is none of your business, hunter. And it has nothing to do with what’s going on here.”

“I don’t know, in my line of work you tend to look for connections. Like how whoever sent those cards last night apparently gave a pair of death cards to the two people least likely to survive this little get together. Someone clearly had it out for Mark, meanwhile the attorney’s second card would be enough to get them killed, and wouldn’t you know it, another card points out how our honorable mayor is making backdoor deals with hunters—” Abe reached out and flicked the top of the mayor’s cane, and despite Damien’s attempt to interrupt him, continued, “You keep that silver close, don’t you? Maybe as much as you throw around words like ‘trust’, you have a little voice in the back of your head that whispers every time you’re around the attorney that maybe today’s the day they—”

Abe threw up an arm to stop the mayor’s hand, privately surprised he hadn’t taken a swing at him with that cane. Although that wasn’t as surprising as the pure venom in the mayor’s voice when he brought himself to speak.

“ _Don’t you dare_. Don’t you dare, for even a single second, suggest that I would ever do _anything_ to hurt them.”

Abe looked Damien in the eyes and slowly the mayor lowered his hand without taking a step back. The mayor took a harsh, shaky breath and then asked a question that surprised Abe. “Do you know what Y/N did, when I accidentally found out?”

Abe silently shook his head.

“We were at a party, back in college, Mark and I had dragged them to it. They didn’t want to be there, and wound up drinking too much before ducking out early. I tried to follow them, to make sure they got home safely, and caught up with them right as they changed.” Damien sighed and looked Abe in the eyes. “When they realized I had seen, they just…backed away, cowering like they were afraid that I would…I don’t know.”

Abe thought back to the first time he had seen the attorney as the wolf. How they had cowered away in fear, never once seeming to consider the idea of attacking him. Not a story he thought he should share with the mayor though, especially considering he had been pointing a loaded gun at them at the time.

“I know they would never hurt anyone, same as I would never do anything to cause them any more pain than they’ve already had to suffer.”

“You can believe a lot of things about someone and still be wrong,” Abe said softly. His mind went to his own card, to some of those names there. He had trusted before, and he knew how that song and dance went.

“Still?” Damien sighed, but the disappointment in the sound rang hollow as he said, “It must be a lonely life, to think the way you do. Never trusting anyone.”

“Better that than to ignore the truth right in front of you because it hurts,” Abe retorted, but the Mayor was already at the door and on his way out of the room.

Abe sighed and gave him some time before following him out. Without thinking about where he was going, he found himself in a small study he had discovered earlier. The walls already bore testament to his twisting train of thought, with scraps of papers and news clippings taped up on every available surface along with his hasty notes, fragments of ideas that never seemed to lead anywhere. Most of the papers had come from within the study itself, or the library upstairs where Mark had an extensive collection of newspapers, although mostly the ones that might have some review related to a performance of his.

He ran his eyes over the pinned pages, looking for something that he had to be missing.

How could the mayor be so sure that his friends were innocent, when the Colonel was still walking around with a gun loaded with silver bullets, same as him? No, _of course_ it was easier to blame the hunter, killing was supposed to be his job after all.

Abe plopped down in the chair and began to absentmindedly type on the typewriter resting beside a stack of books.

The Colonel had the same bullets, the same opportunity.

The Colonel had known Mark for years, had worked for him once.

But now? The two barely shared a word last night, and the DA had found his picture broken on the floor of Mark’s bedroom.

The Colonel had barely blinked an eye upon finding out his ‘friend’ was dead.

The Colonel had offered to put him down ‘again’, seemingly relishing the idea of taking on another of the undead.

The Colonel had been sitting right next to the DA. He could have snuck a look at their card, just as easily as Abe saw the Mayor’s. From there, it would have been easy to confuse the situation around Mark’s death. Kill him, then use a silver bullet to finish the deed and leave people to believe Mark was the werewolf. No jury in the city would question it.

The Colonel was familiar with the house, enough to know that there were two master keys. He could have stolen Mark’s copy and used it to access Abe’s gun, then left the key in Mark’s bedroom and locked the door behind him to hide how it was done.

Abe stared at the page, at the endlessly repeating words that echoed the same certainty that had been building in his mind even though he could not remember consciously typing them out.

_The Colonel did it._

There were still missing pieces, it still didn’t explain what was going on with the cards, and it would not be enough to convince anyone yet, but Abe was certain to his very soul that he was right.

The Colonel killed Markiplier.

And he had let the district attorney walk away with him.

With five silver bullets remaining in his gun.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Abe was up and moving toward the door, his hand on the doorknob just as the shot rang out.


	15. Cards on the Table

Damien paused at the door and looked back at you, but you didn’t slow down any more than it took to wrench the door open and walk not into the living room that you expected but instead into a sitting room you had never noticed despite apparently being just off the foyer. Either that made you pause or, perhaps, it was sight of Abe and the Colonel with their guns pointed at each other as though both were itching for an excuse to shoot.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you better lower your weapon, murderer!” Abe shouted at the Colonel, whose next words were almost drowned out by the thunder outside.

“I bloody well won’t, you’re the one that assaulted me! For all I know, you could be the murderer!”

The Chef entered the room at a run alongside yet another round of thunder and lightning, only to stop up short when he spotted the weapons and the glare both men shot him.

“Last chance! _Drop your weapon!”_

You tried to speak, but your words couldn’t carry over the butler’s lament, “Master’s prized vase!”

“Everyone please!” Damien begged, his voice rising above the noise. “I know we’re all on edge, but can’t we resolve this amicably?”

“On edge?!” Abe risked a glance at the mayor before returning his glare to the Colonel. “This psycho tried to shoot me!”

He backed away as the Colonel approached.

“That’s a bold-faced lie,” the Colonel said, glancing over his shoulder at you as if sensing that you were shadowing his steps in order to explain, “I was merely doing some light target practice.”

“Inside?!” Without an ounce of hesitation, Benjamin waved his duster in the Colonel’s face before the chef pulled him back.

“I was just talking to you a couple of minutes ago, when did you decide to come back inside?” you asked, hoping to at least keep the Colonel distracted. The longer he and Abe kept talking, the longer you could put off the moment when one of them might pull the trigger.

“Well, yes, I couldn’t go on the grounds now with that bloody chef in my way, could I?”

“Damn right! You shoulda remembered that, Private!”

“It’s Colonel,” he growled, apparently more annoyed by being addressed by the wrong rank than the fact the Chef had just given his pith helmet a whap with his ladle.

Behind them, you could see the moment Abe lost his patience, just before he shouted, “Enough of this horseshit! You knew I was on to you, and you tried to whack me off before I could finger you!”

Abe paused just long enough to realize how that sounded before tacking on, “As the murderer!”

More thunder and lightning greeted Abe’s accusation and you had to raise your voice again to be heard.

“Abe, what are you talking about? Colonel!”

The last word came as a shout, as both men were so close now that they could hardly miss with their guns pointed at the others’ face, Abe’s eyes wide with anger and maybe even fear as the Colonel roared, “I will not be called a murderer, in my own home!”

“Stop!”

The cry came from the front door, where a woman dressed in black and white, a veil covering half her face, was briefly silhouetted against the flash of lightning outside.

“What are you doing?!” she shouted as she strode in between the two, the door slamming shut behind her.

“Who the hell are you?” Abe asked as he lowered his weapon.

“Celine,” the Colonel breathed, eyes widening in shock behind his glasses. “What are you doing here?”

_Celine?_

“Celine?” Abe repeated. “Wait, Celine as in—”

“Madame, I’m afraid that you’ve come at a very inopportune time,” Benjamin said, in an amazing example of understatement. “Something dreadful has happened here.”

“I can see that, and I’m glad I got here before it got any worse,” Celine said, looking around the room before her eyes briefly met yours, despite your attempt to back away from the conversation.

Thankfully, her attention was just as quickly drawn away by the chef, who wasted no time in telling her that her ex-husband was dead. Although she did pause at the claim that he was a “flesh-eating zombie.”

_“Homo necrosis?”_ she asked, her eyes immediately going to the Colonel.

“Exactly. Maybe. Possibly. Hence the guns,” the Colonel said, waving his gun.

“That is not ‘hence the guns’!” Abe said, mimicking the Colonel by waving his own gun until he caught your glare and quickly lowered it again. “And stop waving that thing around!”

“H-hold on! Tell me what happened!” Celine said, her hands outstretched in a placating manner. “How did Mark…die?”

“It was murder,” Damien said from behind you, a rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning echoing his words. “And worse yet, the body is missing.”

“What?” Celine paused, the implications no doubt running through her mind the same as it had through everyone else’s. “Show me. And don’t say that word again.”

“What word?” Chef asked. “Murder?”

She glared at him as thunder crashed outside yet again.

“Yes! That word!”

“Well, ‘murder’ is a rather accurate description—” Benjamin started, the thunder and lightning not stopping him but Celine suddenly in his face certainly doing so.

“Do you not see the lightning?!” she shouted, gesturing at one of the nearby windows.

You, having slowly but steadily backed your way out of the group of people until you were standing at a distance, listened with about as much disbelief as the others as Celine explained that, somehow, just saying the word “murder” was enough to call up the thunder and lightning that had been going on all day.

Really, she shouldn’t have been so surprised that the others would be bent on testing this theory all the way to the living room, where Abe pointed out the very clearly empty patch of floor where Mark’s body once lay.

“Stop, stop!” Celine said, finally reaching her breaking point. “Look, whatever is happening here is tapping into forces far beyond our control.”

“Don’t,” she added, a finger at Benjamin when he opened his mouth and waited until the butler shut it again with a loud clop before continuing, “Mark’s death is a terrible thing indeed, but I feel like there’s more to this story. This kind of power doesn’t just build up on its own.”

Damien sighed before taking it upon himself to explain, “Last night, at the beginning of our party, Mark received a strange package. Inside, there were envelopes addressed to all seven of us, each containing cards. Mark’s…happened to include a death card.”

“Cards?” Celine looked around the room at the less than eager to share guests and said with a tone that did not allow for any kind of arguing, “All of you, get your cards and bring them here. Now.”

To your surprise, no one argued. Within minutes, all seven of you were seated around the same table where you played cards the night before, but with a very different set of cards in hand. Abe was the first to move, taking a pair of blood-stained cards from his chest pocket and laying them out in the center of the table for all to see.

“These were on Mark’s body when he was found this morning. Same Death card he showed the table last night, plus one that just says ‘Werewolf.’”

To his credit, Abe didn’t look at you, and neither did Damien or the Colonel. Celine, however, looked straight at you for an entire second before speaking.

“Did you all receive a Tarot card?”

There were murmurs of assent around the table, but Chef added, “Not like I know what mine’s supposed to mean. What the hell is a ‘Hierophant’?”

“Well, the problem is, there’s no context,” Celine said, her eyes roaming around the table to meet each person in turn. “Generally speaking, a traditional reading involves more than just one card, but even on their own the meaning of the card depends a lot on the questions being asked, the individual’s personal experiences and intuitions, and so on. Even the position of the card says so much—the Hierophant upright can mean traditional values and institutions, while upside down it can represent _breaking_ with those same traditions and values. Without context, we don’t know which message was meant.”

Everyone at the table looked at the Chef and Celine cleared her throat before adding, “Although we can always guess.”

The Chef considered for a moment and shrugged, clearly not about to argue. You remembered his other card, the one that called out the restaurant Easy Pickin’s by name. Breaking norms was the whole reason the place was shut down, after all.

“Well?” Celine said, once again looking around the table. “Why don’t you all put your cards on the table, and let’s see if there’s a pattern?”

The Colonel was the first to toss his cards out, almost literally. They skidded a bit when they hit the smooth surface of the table, the typed card with the name “Dave” almost obscured by the “The Lovers” card. You raised an eyebrow and the Colonel only shrugged a shoulder and waved a hand, gesturing for the others to follow suit.

Abe was next, his “Hermit” card mostly obscuring the far longer list of names on his other card, and then Damien, Benjamin, and the Chef followed. While the Chef was almost as careless as the Colonel about laying his cards out, you noticed Damien and Benjamin were more careful to keep the Tarot card on top of their other card to keep it from view. “Temperance” for Benjamin, and “Emperor” for Damien.

And of course, “Death” for you.

“Well,” Abe said, breaking the silence, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any kind of pattern here. It just looks like a bunch of random cards.”

“Perhaps your other cards,” Celine started, only to pause when she saw the collective wince around the table. “Although…I can’t help but notice your card, Y/N.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that one’s much of a mystery,” you said dryly.

The chef nodded, “Yep, someone wants you dead.”

“…Thanks for that, Chef.”

Benjamin hid a chuckle, but Celine remained as serious as ever as she said, “That card doesn’t always mean literal death. It could refer to the end of a phase in your life, a sudden change. _Transformation_.”

She didn’t need to put the emphasis on the last word any more than she needed to close her eyes and outstretch a hand toward you as she intoned, “But I sense something else at work here. Why is it that you and Mark received the same card, but everyone else’s was different? This couldn’t have just been a mistake. A Tarot deck wouldn’t have duplicates of the major arcana, so someone had to go out of their way to make sure there would be two Deaths here.”

Here, Celine opened her eyes and added, “More importantly, I can’t help but notice you’re the only one here to put just one card on the table. Why is that? What are you trying to hide?”

“I…” You faltered, unable to offer an explanation. It wasn’t like you were about to admit the werewolf card belonged to you, but it did beg the question of what happened to Mark’s other card. Did he not get a second card like everyone else, or if he did, where did it go?

You picked up the Death card and showed it to the table, trying to feign ignorance as you said, “This is all I’ve—”

Except your words were cut short when the card in your hand slipped and you felt the second, unnoticed card stuck to its back give and reveal itself. The card meant for Mark, the one he probably never got a chance to see for himself.

You paused and, realizing there was nothing else you could do at this point, turned the card over and read aloud the words typed on it.

“ _’Mirror, mirror, on the wall, watch as I—‘”_

You stopped short, but there was nothing you could do to stop everyone else at the table, who were already reading the rest for themselves:

_Betray them all._


	16. Alone With the Seer

_“Mirror, mirror, on the wall_

_Watch as I betray them all”_

The words on the card had an immediate effect on the table, and feebly you said, “I don’t…This isn’t—”

“Isn’t what?” Celine asked when you hesitated, and you swore you could hear the taunt in her voice.

But you couldn’t answer her, couldn’t just admit that your card was the bloodstained one lying in the middle of the table, the word “werewolf” an accusation and condemnation all in one.

“You’ve been awfully quiet this whole time, Y/N,” Celine pressed further, and you could feel the energy ripple around the table, the accusing stares that you met one by one as the others piled on.

“With those beady little eyes,” Chef said, his gaze going to your bruised eye in particular.

“And wearing those rags?” Benjamin scoffed, leaving you to fight the urge to look down at your wrinkled and disheveled clothes from last night’s party.

Your gaze went to Abe next, saw his eyes flicker over you before he said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted someone so god damn gorgeous.”

_Wait, what?_

In between you and him, the Colonel seemed to realize that it was his turn to speak up, but he only waved a hand and said, “I’ll pass.”

On your other side, Damien remained silent and tense, his eyes on the card in front of you. You couldn’t be sure what was going through his mind, whether he would have spoken up for you if he knew a way to do so without causing more trouble—or if his sister wasn’t here.

“This card doesn’t mean anything,” you said. “It sounds more like a taunt than an accusation, doesn’t it?”

“…True,” Celine said, surprising you. “It’s as though someone singled you out, to observe what’s happened here this weekend. As I suggested earlier, I believe this is just one part of a bigger story, and I sense that you have a far greater role to play in all of this. I trust you can help me find an answer, Y/N. Will you help me?”

“…I want to know what happened to Mark, the same as everyone else at this table,” you answered, and she smiled.

“Perfect. Come with me.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Abe said, before she could rise from her chair. “How exactly do you expect them to ‘help’ you?”

“There are ways to find the answers we seek. I am a practiced seer, and with that comes experience with the arcane arts. Believe me when I say that I have seen things that you could not possibly begin to understand,” Celine said, drawing herself up to her full height to better glare down at him.

“Try me,” Abe muttered under his breath, before raising his voice again as he stood. “So what, you’re going to drag my partner off to do some ritual that will most likely lead to their death?”

“No one said anything about dying,” you said, ignoring the way the butler and the chef both looked at the “Death” card lying right in front of you.

“This isn’t up for debate, partner,” Abe said without looking at you, his eyes still locked on Celine.

Partner. Abe’s second card was just barely visible underneath his “Hermit” card, but you didn’t have to see it to remember the long list of names typed on it.

Before you could think of anything reassuring to say to him in front of everyone else, the Colonel stood as well, both hands flat on the table.

“Well, I trust Celine with all my heart! I don’t see any reason why anyone should doubt her!”

While Abe and the Colonel glared at each other, Benjamin raised a finger and said, “Well, I have to agree with our hunter. This just doesn’t seem natural.”

“Yeah, like any of this is ‘natural,’” Chef countered. “We might be dealing with a werewolf, have you all forgotten that?”

You wished you could forget, same as you wished half the table wouldn’t look at you when he said it.

“If it makes you feel better, you guys can stand watch outside the door,” Celine said. “But my work cannot be interrupted.”

“Oh, believe you me, I’ll be keeping a close eye on every single one of you.” Abe stared around the table. “Doesn’t matter how natural or not all of this is, I’m sure I’ve dealt with worse.”

That apparently settled, Celine gestured for you to follow her and walked out of the room, but you weren’t the only one to rise from the table.

Damien, who had been silent this entire time, passed you at the door frame and caught up to Celine at the foot of the stairs with a cry of, “Celine, wait!”

“Yes, Damien?” Celine asked curtly, her tone suggesting that she only stopped because her twin brother had blocked the way up the stairs.

“Are you alright? I know this news can’t be settling well with you.”

Celine brushed past him, her voice empty of emotion as she said, “I’m fine for now.”

You and Damien locked eyes, briefly.

Celine had been Mark’s wife, up until the fallout earlier this year. You didn’t know the details, you doubted anyone outside of the couple and perhaps Damien did. Even the tabloids had failed to pick up anything beyond baseless rumors and swirling gossip as Mark retreated away from the world at the same time. You’d barely seen him after the divorce.

Of course, you had barely seen him before the divorce, too.

Leaving it up to Damien to chase after Celine and try again, saying as he went up the stairs, “But all of this talk of the occult, I thought you had—”

“Given it up after I married Mark?” Celine answered as she paused at the top of the stairs.

“Well, yes,” Damien said. “I just thought…you wouldn’t become wrapped up in all of this. We don’t know what’s going on here, Celine, someone sent those cards, they knew us and they mur—Mark is dead.”

“There’s more to this world than you could ever hope to imagine. I just had my eyes opened to a small portion of it, and I can’t just close them now, little brother,” Celine said. “Especially not now, when it could help us find out who killed Mark.”

She turned and continued on down the hall without waiting for a response, and after a moment to sigh and run his hand through his hair, Damien called after her, “Just be careful!”

You reached the top of the stairs and glanced at Damien, who failed to meet your eyes. You could have asked him why his sister would be here, or if he knew why Mark’s card said what it did. You could have asked him why he had said nothing at the table, when everyone else turned against you.

But you didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer any answers.

Instead, he just added softly, “You too.”

Like you would follow Celine into yet another small room that you had never seen before or shut the door behind you if you were trying to be careful.

“It has been a while, hasn’t it, Y/N?” Celine asked as she opened a black leather bag and began placing a series of items on top of the small table in between you, starting with a tattered, square piece of fabric whose corners hung down over the side of the table. “Since we had a chance to talk alone like this.”

“Couldn’t have anything to do with what you said you would do if I ever set foot in this house again, would it?” you asked. “Something about a fur rug, wasn’t it?”

Celine gave a fond smile at the memory as she lit the last of several candles, which did little to break the darkness in the room. The flickering flames caught her eyes and sent a shadow over her face as she said, “Well, it certainly didn’t stop you, now did it?”

“I didn’t think you’d care, all things considered. Why should it bother you who your ex-husband chooses to invite to some party?” You crossed your arms and sat back in your chair, fighting to appear calm and collected even though every hair on your body felt as though it were standing on its end.

“What bothers me is that I warned you, I _warned_ you something like this would happen when I told you to stay away from Mark and my brother,” Celine said, her voice rising slightly before she regained control of herself. “And you didn’t listen to me.”

There were more items on the table now, besides the candles. A large crystal ball, several strange, wooden shapes covered in markings you couldn’t understand, a couple of dark, pitted stones that seemed to absorb the light from the candles. And, clenched tight in her right hand, a silver amulet.

“I had nothing to do with Mark’s death—”

“Oh, and it’s just a coincidence that he had _your_ cards on him, just before he took a silver bullet to the chest?” Celine asked. “I knew, as soon as I saw you for what you were, that you would mean nothing but pain and ruin for Mark and Damien if I didn’t—”

“What does Damien have to do with this?” you interrupted, your own hands clenched tight to fight back the urge to change, to get out of this room.

“What do you think would have happened, if someone had found that werewolf card on you? If your little secret left this house?” Celine asked, her voice lowered and trembling. “The district attorney, friend to Mark Iplier and the mayor himself, revealed to all the world to be a werewolf. And suddenly everyone’s wondering how much they knew, if Damien was simply ignorant of the true nature of the monster he backed and helped put into office, or if he knew. Everything he worked so hard for, ruined in a single weekend because he just wouldn’t listen to me.”

“You told him to stay away from me, too,” you said. It wasn’t a surprise, just another confirmation of how much the Seer hated you.

“For all the good it did,” Celine muttered. “Instead, he just went and offered to hide you away in his own home every full moon. Like keeping _you_ safe was the problem here.”

“…What about Mark?” you asked. “Did you ever…?”

“Tell him you were a werewolf?” Celine laughed without a trace of humor. “No, it never came up. His work kept him busy enough that he didn’t have time for anyone else, so that was never a problem.”

Was that a trace of bitterness in her voice? Or maybe you just imagined it.

Your eyes ran over her fingers again, noting that there wasn’t even a line to mark her missing wedding ring anymore.

“Why are you here, Celine?”

Celine paused and then sighed, her breath nearly extinguishing one of the candles closest to her before she opened her eyes again and met your stare.

“I couldn’t shake the feeling I had about this party, ever since I heard about it. I felt, I _knew_ that something terrible would happen this weekend, I tried to warn…But it happened anyways, and I don’t think it’s stopped happening, not yet.” She ran her hand over the two cards in front of her, and with a start you recognized the bloodstained cards Abe had placed on the table earlier. “You can feel it, can’t you? There is something at work here, a presence that…that reminds me of you.”

“What?”

She pointed at your chest with the hand still holding the silver amulet and said, “That curse that clings to you, it reeks of the same darkness that lurks in these walls. It’s how I knew there was something wrong with you, the moment I met you.”

You reached up and gripped your shirt, remembering that night in the woods. Those solid black eyes that had taken your friend, the silver touch that left you reeling until the moonlight changed your life forever. The night you learned that there were things out there, entities that would do anything to enter this world, cruel beings that didn’t care who they hurt along the way to whatever goal they set their sight on.

There was something that clung to the air of this house, that pressed down at every moment, leaving you with the itch in the back of your spine that screamed it wasn’t safe, that left you feeling so close to changing at every moment. If there was even a chance that Celine was right, that there could be something like that in this house…

“What do you think we could do?” you asked. “To stop it?”

Celine tapped the crystal ball with her finger and said, “To start with, we need to know what we’re dealing with. I believe that your curse means that you already have a connection with things not of our world—”

She cut you off before you could protest and continued, “Whether we like it or not, you’re the best option we have right now. I’ll do what I can to help, but I need you to concentrate and tell me what you see.”

She waited until you reluctantly nodded and then spread her hands out over the cards, the silver amulet still tucked between two fingers as she closed her eyes. Her lips moved, but you couldn’t hear any words, only feel the darkness begin to gather in the corners of the room, threatening to snuff out the light of the candles, whose sputtering flames illuminated the swirling mists within the crystal ball at the center of the table.

You found your eyes drawn to the crystal ball, to the images that flickered within the mists inside echoed by the shifting shadows in the corners of your eyes.

The images grew stronger the longer you looked, until it was like you were there again, standing in the foyer looking up the stairs as Mark spoke to the small gathering with his drink in hand.

_“—surrounded by such close and trusted friends—”_

_His eyes met yours, his words twisted and broken by the memory of his body on the floor until you wondered if they had always sounded so hollow and bitter._

_“I locked the door to your room once I was sure you were safe and sound in bed,” Damien’s voice said in your head, contradicting the image in your mind of reaching the open bedroom door just as the butler rounded the corner, tray in hand._

_The next image that floated up was Damien and Abe arguing in your bedroom, their voices muffled and distant. You watched in confusion, wondering when this happened until Abe’s voice swam into focus and you heard him say, “—have a little voice in the back of your head that whispers every time you’re around the attorney that maybe today’s the day they—”_

_His words drifted back into the muffled haze that surrounded you, leaving only another layer to the sick and twisted ache in the center of your chest and you shut your eyes, not wanting to see the words on his lips or Damien’s response._

_You stepped back and found yourself looking down at the Colonel, seated on the bench outside with his eyes hidden behind his glasses, his smile wistful as he said, “I guess we both needed someone to keep us this side of sane. I had hoped she would help me—”_

_You saw the Chef, knife in hand as he spoke of his failed restaurant, heard Benjamin’s lament about a partner who betrayed him, too many voices swirling together until, suddenly, you found yourself standing outside again, this time in darkness._

_You could hear a voice, muffled and going in and out too much to make out any individual words, only the rise and fall of the speech of a man you had never seen before, leaning on a shovel as he spoke to you and Abe and the Chef, his eyes alight with urgency. Something important, something…_

You blinked, the room returning to focus as you whispered, “The gardener.”

“The what?” Celine asked, her biting voice cutting through the mist that still seemed to fill your head. “Did you see something? Someone? Tell me!”

“The gardener, he’s seen this before,” you said softly, dreamily as though you were still half-asleep, but you felt certain you were right about this. The gardener would know what to do.

Celine, on the other hand, only seemed to grow angrier at the sound of your words, like you hadn’t given her the answer she was looking for. “Is that it?! No, you need to go back, there has to be more—”

It must have been the remaining haze in your mind, that made you ignore the obvious presence in the room growing stronger with her every word, how the darkness in the corners had left the flames of the candles like pale echoes of any real light, that made you think now was an okay time to ask your next question.

“The Colonel’s Lovers card. Who else knew you two were having an affair, besides Mark?”

There was only a moment, barely a second to register the surprise on the seer’s face, before it quickly turned to rage.


	17. The Groundskeeper

Abe leaned against the railing in the hallway, eyes locked on the closed door and doing his best to try and ignore the man standing near it. Damien seemed to be doing the same, as the silence stretched on minute after minute with neither one making a move to break it.

Celine. Just what Abe needed, another wildcard to add another unwanted layer to this whole situation. A wildcard who claimed she could figure out what was going on here, after turning the whole house against his partner in the space of seconds.

Abe ran a hand over his face as he recalled that moment at the table when the attorney discovered the second card stuck to the death card. Mark’s card they were forced to claim as their own, if they didn’t want to be outed as a werewolf.

_Mirror mirror, on the wall,_

_Watch as I betray them all._

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Even knowing that it was meant for Mark didn’t help make it any clearer. So far it looked like the only one here who had been betrayed was the actor, who apparently didn’t even get a card to helpfully explain why someone in particular might want him dead.

Still, not hard to see why nearly everyone at the table was so quick to be suspicious of the attorney, to the point he had gone along with the flow and spit out the first thing that came to mind while keeping his own suspicions close to his chest. Now though, Abe winced at the memory of how he had called them gorgeous to their face. What was that supposed to be, an accusation or a confession?

Even with his silent panic over his choice of words, Abe had noticed how both the Colonel and the mayor had failed to speak up in that moment. Why was that?

He glanced at Damien out of the corner of his eye, but the man stood there with his head bowed, cane passing back and forth between his hands in a repetitive, thoughtless motion that suggested his mind was hundreds of miles away at the moment.

Had he been afraid to stand up for the attorney in front of everyone, in front of his sister? Or had he been trying to hide his own doubts and suspicions?

And then there was the Colonel. Abe knew, with every fiber of his being, that the Colonel killed Markiplier. It was the only answer that made any sense, but with Celine’s sudden appearance he felt that certainty surrounded by pits of unknowns.

Celine claimed to know all about the arcane arts, and she certainly seemed familiar enough with those Tarot cards everyone was laying out on the table earlier. Enough to pick and choose the cards that would supposedly fit this little game the sender of those cards had started. And as Mark’s (ex-)wife, she had to have some kind of history with his friends and staff, judging by the way the Colonel and the District Attorney had looked at her when she entered the house.

And if she was half the seer she claimed to be, it would explain how those cards knew things supposedly no one else should know, like the names of all of his partners. She definitely knew about the attorney, Abe hadn’t missed how she hinted as much every other word she said to them, or how his partner kept avoiding her gaze, had flinched away at the first sound of her voice…

Maybe letting them go in there with her alone had been just as bad an idea as Abe suspected. Straining, he could just barely hear their voices, although without the attorney’s hearing he couldn’t make out any individual words.

_“But you know what they say: Never trust a seer.”_

The memory of those words hit Abe like a delayed ton of bricks, and he must have made some kind of noise judging by the way the mayor suddenly looked up in surprise. But Abe didn’t have time to worry about him, as he remembered the words of the werewolf who had terrorized the city just months ago, lamenting how “her” advice had steered him toward running into Abe instead of the promised DA.

An unknown seer who wanted his partner dead…

Abe was already moving toward the door when the voices on the other side went from a low murmur to shouting, followed by the crash of something falling over, and Damien was right there with him when he wrenched the door open and took in the sight of the District Attorney standing over their fallen chair while Celine slammed her hands down on the table in between them, the sound punctured by the hard thump of something metallic striking into the wood, her next words stopped short by the sound of her brother’s voice.

“Celine? What is all of this?”

“Get out! We are not done here,” Celine said, pointing at the door.

“Celine, I think this is quite enough,” Damien started, but Celine slammed her hands down on the table again, causing one of the lit candles to topple over and promptly go out. And again, Abe heard that metallic sound and followed it to her hands, to the flicker of light reflecting off of the silver medallion hanging around one palm.

“It’s enough when I say it’s enough!”

Damien just stood there, seemingly shocked by his sister’s sudden and unexpected anger, but Abe was already at his partner’s side, quietly urging them to follow with a hand on their elbow as he guided them quickly out of the dark room and into the light of the hallway.

“What did she do to you?” he asked.

They did not resist his pull and let him walk them out despite Celine’s protests, but Abe noticed that their eyes failed to meet his own, their other arm wrapped tight around their middle as though fighting off a chill even though their skin felt warm to the touch even through the fabric of their shirt.

“We need to find the gardener,” they said softly before wincing at the conversation going on in the room behind them, even though Abe could no longer hear what the siblings were saying.

Gardener? That didn’t even start to answer his questions, but right now Abe thought getting his partner as far away from that seer as possible was the priority here, preferably without her realizing he was onto her game.

“Butler! Butler!” he shouted and the man in question appeared at the end of the hall. “What do you know about a gardener?”

“Well, we have a groundskeeper, George,” Benjamin said slowly, baffled by the unexpected question. “But he only works weekdays.”

But his buddy the chef was saying a different story with his not at all casual lean against the wall and blatant attempts to pretend like he wasn’t part of this conversation happening inches away from him.

“Looks like your friend here may disagree with that notion,” Abe said, getting too close to the chef who made the mistake of feigning ignorance.

“Chef!” Benjamin said, “If you know something, for god’s sake spit it out!”

The chef looked between the hunter and the butler before sighing and raising his hands in defeat. “Okay, alright, you’re twisting my arm. George has been living on the grounds for years.”

“What?!” Benjamin exclaimed, apparently just as unaware of this turn of events as Abe.

“And you just now thought to share that information with us?” Abe asked. Another person on the grounds, another member of the staff who could have known about the master keys, yet another wildcard being dropped in Abe’s lap when he already had too much to deal with as it was. “For all we know, he could be the murderer!”

He spoke without thinking, the lash of thunder coming just before Celine caught up with them, Damien uselessly trailing along behind her.

“For the last time, stop saying that word!”

Abe glared at her, noting how the attorney kept their distance and refused to look at either of the twins. Or him, for that matter. What had happened in that room?

Before he could wonder for long, the chef spoke up again. “Look, George…just tends to the grounds, man. He’s a hermit.”

“I don’t care what he is!” Abe snarled, a bit harsher than he meant to at the unintentional reminder of the cards in his pocket.

“Look, all this arguing is getting us nowhere,” Damien interrupted. “Just go outside and talk to this George and be done with it!”

Getting outside of this house sounded like a hell of a good idea right now, but something about Damien’s words made the hunter pause. “Hold on a sec. You’re not coming with us?”

Damien stuttered, looking from him to his sister to the attorney. “I-I need to stay here with Celine.”

“I don’t need help. Especially from you!” Celine shot back, confirming Abe’s suspicion that the twins’ private talk a moment ago hadn’t gone well.

“Our friend is dead!” Damien shouted, and even Celine shrank back at his outburst. “I’m sorry. I just need answers to all of this. I already lost one friend today, I don’t want to lose another.”

Abe watched him closely, but Damien didn’t look at the attorney when he said it, and they didn’t look at him.

“Fine,” Celine said, looking at her brother with something new in her expression. Concern, maybe? “But I need to stay here.”

“Fine with me,” Damien answered.

“Fine, good, yeah, whatever, who cares,” Abe said with a roll of his eyes. Damien wasn’t his concern here, after all. Instead, he turned to the chef and said, “Alright, you’re coming with me. Partner, you too.”

They nodded, even though they watched the twins head back to Celine’s little séance room out of the corner of their eye, which was good because Abe wasn’t in the mood to argue right now. He needed to talk to them, in private if he could swing it, and outside was his best shot at that. After they had questioned this George guy, of course.

“Hold on a sec…” Abe said, slowly realizing his headcount was coming up short. “We’re missing someone. Who had eyes on the Colonel?”

“Well, he appeared tired,” Benjamin explained. “He grabbed a snack and went back to his room.”

“I’m sure he did,” Abe said. Maybe the guilt was finally getting to the man. “And with any luck, he’ll stay there. Come on.”

He started for the stairs and realized that not everyone was following him. He looked back and saw his partner just standing there, one hand still pressed against their side while their eyes were on the closed door between them and Damien and Celine.

“Come on, partner! Come on!”

They lagged behind as the Chef led the way downstairs, his grumbling not pausing for a second as he stopped to pick up a lantern before walking outside.

How was it already dark out? Abe wondered to himself as he stopped at a distance from the door, barely sparing a glimpse at the cloudy and starless night sky overhead as he waited for the attorney to catch up.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and once again their eyes avoided his.

“I’m fine,” they muttered, like he couldn’t see the hand still pressed against their side or hear their labored breath.

“Like hell you are,” Abe said, reaching out to grab their hand only to get a brief, cut off yell of pain from the attorney before he pulled back. “What was that? What did she do to you?”

Reluctantly, perhaps sensing that he wasn’t about to let this go, they reached down and pulled up the side of their shirt, just far enough to reveal an already swelling burn visible even in the darkness outside of the house. A burn roughly the same size as that silver medallion Abe had seen in the seer’s hand.

“I’ll kill her,” Abe growled, and the attorney dropped their shirt in order to grab his arm before he could go back inside.

“Abe. She didn’t—”

“Oh, she knew exactly what she was doing,” Abe snarled, not caring that the chef had stopped up ahead, holding up his lantern and clearly waiting to see what was holding them up. “You can’t tell me she didn’t know!”

“No, there was something going on in that room, like there was something else there. Something…” they paused, brow knitting as they failed to find the words. Whatever had happened in that room, whether it was ‘something else there’ or the burn of the silver, seemed to have left them confused, disorientated.

Ripe picking for someone who had it out for them.

“As much as she hates me, I’ve _never_ seen Celine lose control like that. It’s like…”

They trail off, the words once again failing them, but Abe found his eyes drawn toward the bruise on their eye. But that wasn’t the same, he told himself, although the pit in his stomach said otherwise.

“We need to see the groundskeeper,” they said again, gesturing toward the waiting chef. “When I was in that room, I saw—I saw us talking to him, and it felt like he was saying something important.”

“Wait, you saw us?” Abe asked, walking in step with the attorney as they began to move forward. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

They shrugged and then winced, apparently having disturbed their burn with the movement. “Celine asked me to try to see something. This was the only thing that hadn’t happened yet.”

“What else did you see?” Abe asked, but their lips just pressed tight together, their eyes darting away to avoid his stare and instead lingering on the chef, who commented on how slow they were before continuing on, around the outside of the house until they spotted the lone figure standing in the middle of a flowerbed, shovel in hand.

“Hey, buddy! Hands where I can see them!” Abe called ahead as he approached, gun already raised. After how this day had gone so far, he wasn’t about to take any chances.

The groundskeeper paused in his digging and rested his hands on the handle of the shovel, without a trace of concern about the gun pointed his way. He was an older man, the wrinkles and shadows on his face partially hidden by the hat he wore, but his eyes were sharp as they met Abe’s and he said, “Hey, my hands are where they’re supposed to be. Unless, of course, you’d like to dig the hole for yourself.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Abe asked.

“I’m the groundskeeper, I keep the ground alright?” the groundskeeper, George, answered, a trace of annoyance showing up in his voice. “I’d say look around. The ground is pretty well kept, don’t you think?”

The chef spoke up with, “I’m sorry, man, this hunter made me bring him out here.”

“You shut up!” Abe said, earning a slight hiss from the attorney that he ignored. He was tired, he was scared for himself and his already injured partner, and he just wanted some answers for once. Was that too much to ask for? “How do you not know about the murders going on in this house?”

There it was again, the thunder.

“A hunter, eh?” George asked, not even flinching at the sound that left the other three looking up in case some more might follow. “Well I can tell you, there ain’t much out here to hunt.”

Abe wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if the groundskeeper placed an extra emphasis on the words “out here,” but he was tired of beating around the bush. “Why exactly are you digging a hole out here? And why shouldn’t we suspect you for taking part in the death of your employer?”

He laughed. George actually laughed at his question before answering with a shake of his head, “Employers come and go! Some die, some don’t, some are murdered, some are not. It’s none of my business! I’m digging this hole for a burst water pipe, if that’s alright with your gracelessness!”

“See I told you,” the chef chimed in. “George didn’t do nothin’!”

“See?” George asked, the blade of his shovel striking the stone of the patio. “I just did nothing.”

The attorney, after a long look at the silent sky overhead, asked, “You said some of your employers are—some are killed? Has something like this happened here before?”

At that, George fixed the attorney with a long, steady stare before he said, “Aye, not that it’s any of my business what goes on in that house. I’ve got enough sense to stay away from what’s in there, and if any of you had sense of your own, you’d do the same.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Abe asked, feeling his grip reflexively tighten on his gun.

“You know, don’t you?” George said, directing the question toward the attorney. “You’ve got the look about you of someone who’s run into one of those things from the other side. They’re like…”

“Powerful entities,” the attorney continued, surprising Abe. Even with the light from the chef’s lantern and the exterior lights around the edge of the house, their expression was difficult to make out as they said, “Not quite part of this reality that sometimes…look for a way in.”

George nodded and pointed at the house behind them. “And that house is one big gaping doorway just waiting to happen.”

The chef looked back at the house uneasily, but Abe couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice as he said, “Forgive me for not taking you at face value. But we’re all gonna come inside, we’re gonna sit down, and have a nice lovely chat. And get to the bottom of this before I lose my mind and start dabbling in murder myself!”

He didn’t know what this George was playing at, or what Celine had been pumping into his partner’s mind, but in all of his years hunting Abe had never heard of these “entities” or whatever these things were supposed to be, and by this point he could care less about the crack of thunder overhead.

“Now you listen to me, sonny,” George said, his voice deadly calm. “It’s been fifteen years since I’ve been in that house, and I am not about to break that winning streak now. I don’t care how many murders there’ve been. I ain’t going near that house!”

He fixed his eyes on the attorney as he added, “However, there is one reason. One incident. One manifestation. That will get me into that mad house.”

He paused, and Abe could see in his partner’s eyes that they knew exactly what he was talking about, their unsteady frame growing stiffer at his words as the breath seemed to catch in their chest.

George nodded. “You had better pray to God that reason never comes to pass.”

A clap of thunder, louder than any that had come before it, broke the silence that followed his words. The lightning seemed to carry on until Abe and the others realized that the light was spilling out of the house, out of every door and window until it lit up the night sky like a supernova.

“That there’s the reason!” George bellowed, his shovel clattering to the ground as he tore off toward the house.

Abe took off after him, but to his surprise the attorney sprinted past both of them, the burn on their side apparently forgotten as they ran full tilt into the house. By the time he and the groundskeeper were inside, the chef huffing and puffing somewhere behind them, the attorney was already halfway up the stairs and showing no signs of slowing.

That is, until they discovered the source of the bizarre light and the roaring sound that accompanied it, like the sound of tornado-force winds trying to push their way out of the single open door at the end of the hall, out of which flooded the blinding light that at first obscured the figure silhouetted in the door frame.

“Celine?”

The District Attorney’s voice was faint, nearly drowned out by the wave of noise, but Abe could hear the disbelief and rising panic as they shouted, _“Damien!_ ”

But there was no sign of him, and the woman standing in the door did not visibly react to the sound of her own name. Even from this far away, Abe could feel the sheer wrongness of the figure, as if everything from her stance to the slight, terrifying smile tugging at the corner of her lips to the vacant yet menacing eyes all screamed at his soul to get back. He had faced enough monsters, enough terrible things that should have stayed in nightmares to recognize the body’s instinctive desire to get away and stay alive, but the attorney took another step forward.

“Don’t!” George shouted. “It’s already too late!”

Abe wasn’t sure if they couldn’t hear him or if they just didn’t care, but the second he saw them start to move he surged forward and wrapped his arms around them. It took all of his strength to hold the struggling attorney back while George, together with the chef and the butler who had followed the noise and light, ran to the door.

The attorney screamed Damien’s name, swore at Celine to snap out of it, begging every second while they scratched and pushed at Abe, staring helplessly as Celine—or whatever it was looking out of her eyes—disappeared behind the closing door, which apparently required all three men working together to force it shut.

“The key!” George shouted, but before the chef or the butler could move, Abe reached into his pocket and tossed them one of the master keys, which he immediately used to lock the door.

In that moment, the attorney twisted, and for one, terrible second Abe thought they might transform right here in the middle of the hallway in front of everyone, before a blow to the back of his head sent him and in turn the attorney stumbling forward.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the Colonel asked, his voice low and dangerous. “What was that, what happened to Celine? To Damien?!”

“Your friends are already dead,” George said, not even looking at him as he drew a string out of his pocket and began making elaborate loops and knots around both the handle and the key still in the lock. “The best we can hope for is to get out of here before it takes the rest of us with them.”

And Abe thought he was bad at breaking bad news.

In front of him, all of the wind seemed to escape from the attorney, and whatever force had been holding up until now seemed to give out as they staggered forward before catching their self. “No…we can’t just—No!”

They looked back over their shoulder at Abe, and he could see the desperation in their eyes as they silently begged him to say or do something, to prove the groundskeeper was wrong.

“This is bullshit!” the Colonel exclaimed instead, stepping forward to fill the space between the attorney and the groundskeeper, who was still absorbed in what Abe recognized as a binding. “They’re in there, we just have to get rid of whatever that…thing was! A—a spell, or an exorcism maybe!”

George laughed, a short, dry, cracked sound. “You think no one’s tried that before? They carried the last guy who tried out of here in a shoe box. No, I’m getting away from here, and if any of had half a brain you’d do the same!”

With that, George turned away from the door and walked past them all, ignoring the Colonel’s angry sputter and shout of “Don’t walk away from me!” as well as Abe’s attempt to stop him, to ask for some kind of explanation.

The chef was right there behind George with a cry of, “I quit!”, not even bothering to try and not bump into the Colonel on his way out.

The Colonel swore at their retreating backs and sprang toward the door, ignoring Abe’s warning only to draw back his hand with a shout the moment his fingers made contact with the door.

“It’s a binding spell, you can’t just open it that easily,” Abe explained while the Colonel hissed and stuck his fingers in his mouth to cool them. “And what exactly were you planning on doing when you opened that door? We have no idea how to handle that thing!”

The butler, who was still standing near the door, placed a hand on the Colonel’s shoulder and added, “I know things seem far beyond your control right now, but it’s the same for all of us here. Whatever is going on here is beyond any of us to deal with, clearly. I shall take my leave, and I implore you to do the same.”

The Colonel slapped away his hand and snarled the words, “I won’t let…my friends…die in this godforsaken house! And if you all are too much of a coward to do the same, you had best leave before I kill you myself!”

He directed his words at all three of those who were left, but Abe suspected most of the anger was directed at him in particular, like he thought the hunter was holding back something, like he had any more of an idea of what was going on here than anyone else.

“Now you hold on a second!” Abe shouted, grabbing his shoulder. He couldn’t let the Colonel get away, not now. “I’ve got more questions—”

“Get your hands off me!” The Colonel pushed him away and continued walking, muttering under his breath about finding his own answers.

“What the hell is going on here?” Abe asked, but the butler had no response to offer and the attorney…

They were leaning heavily against the wall now, one hand to their side and their breath coming in sharp gasps that Abe knew couldn’t be blamed entirely on the desperate run up here.

“Partner,” he said, then when he moved to stand in front of them, hands on their shoulders, “Y/N. Look at me.”

They didn’t. Their eyes were down, but he could see them lingering on the door in their peripheral vision just as easily as he could see the tears welling up and threatening to spill over with every pained breath.

Abe hesitated, aware of the butler standing nearby and the sound of the Colonel’s footsteps getting farther away with every passing second. A hundred things he could say or do ran through his head only to leave nothing, no clue where to even start.

“We can—I’ll make this right, somehow. Just…just take care of yourself until I get back, okay?”

He waited, but there was no response, no sign that they had even heard him. Instead, he just squeezed their shoulders before letting go and backing away, waiting until he was out of their line of sight before he silently gestured for the butler to keep an eye on them. At Benjamin’s nod, he turned and took off down the hall in the direction he last saw the Colonel.

Celine, Damien, this “entity,” whoever or whatever was pulling the strings here, none of it made any sense and Abe had no idea where to even begin unraveling all of it except starting with the one fact he knew for sure: Mark was dead, and he knew who pulled the trigger.

He couldn’t let the Colonel get away, not now.


	18. Voices in the Halls

“I know he’s in pain, and I know you might be too…”

You looked up and the butler paused before continuing.

“But we need to leave this place. I don’t know what is happening here,” he said, eyes drifting toward the locked and bound door before returning to your face. “But I believe George was right. There’s only death here now.”

“I can’t,” you whispered. “Not without—I can’t.”

“You can wait for the hunter outside,” Benjamin said. “He can take care of himself, but you…I must be honest, you don’t look well.”

You couldn’t bring yourself to correct him, so you just shook your head and said, “I…I just need a second. Please.”

The butler hesitated until he saw the look in your eyes, heard the hitch in your voice. “Very well, but you really must not stay here.”

You nodded, mumbling something about being right behind him, and the butler reluctantly walked away with one last look back at you with something that might have been pity, not that you cared anymore.

_Damien._

You had seen him right here just minutes ago, although now it felt more like seconds or maybe hours since you saw him and his sister disappear through the now sealed door. And then…

You couldn’t breathe.

_Damien was gone._

He wasn’t there, no gentle voice to call you back to yourself, no one around to see as you curled in on yourself and turned into the wolf, a low whine escaping your chest as you tried to shut your eyes to it all.

He couldn’t just be gone, could he? There had to be something, anything you could do, but you were painfully aware that there was no magician appearing at the last second to set almost everything right, not this time. There was no sign that there had even been anything left of Celine _to_ save. They were already…

_“Hey.”_

Your claws caught and tore into the carpet as you shot up, hackles raised as you stared at the door.

_Celine?_

You tentatively moved closer, ears cocked forward in search of any sound, any hope, but there wasn’t even a breath to break the silence. When you sniffed at the bottom of the door, the scent of rot and decay filled your nostrils, sending you skittering backward to get away.

But the smell wouldn’t leave you. In fact it seemed to be coming from the very walls of the house itself, which seemed to have not just aged but suffered from some kind of infestation while you weren’t looking. The wood and plaster on the walls were covered with stains from something dark trying to leak its way through, while dust and rot drifted down from the ceiling above in a way that suggested the roof would soon follow.

_“Help!”_

You heard the voice again, you were sure of it, but it wasn’t coming from the sealed room. Cautiously, you began to walk down the hall, body shuddering with every step as you felt the not quite damp and yet not quite dry carpet give beneath the pads of your paws. 

But you kept moving forward, following the direction you thought the voice came from until you heard another, and another, and another, all distant and distorted like echoes, like the things you saw in Celine’s crystal ball. You weren’t concerned about anyone seeing you like this, not when everyone who didn’t know was already gone, and more than any fear of being seen was the fear that you might miss something without the wolf’s hearing. 

You found yourself in the dining room despite not going down any stairs and heard Abe’s voice in the distance, angry but so low and slurred that you almost didn’t recognize it.

_“I know exactly what you are, you…”_

You turned, following the last traces of his voice while keeping your slow, even pace, eyes roaming for a sign of anyone, anything, until another voice took you off guard in the living room.

_“Be careful,” Damien’s voice whispered. The last words he said to you._

You sped up in an unfamiliar hallway, less cautious now as you tried to keep up only to find yourself in Mark’s bedroom. Only to hear his voice.

_“…surrounded by close and trusted friends.”_

Bedrooms, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, you found yourself walking through one room after the other with no rhyme or reason to connect them or the twisting, turning hallways except for the voices fading in and out, always just out of reach, always leading you on. The butler, the chef, the groundskeeper, you heard them all, but every room was as dark and empty and cold as the last.

Until you spotted the open door up ahead, one you had never noticed before, the light inside beckoning you as the darkness and rot faded away behind you.

By the time you reached the door, you had already changed back, stumbling a little at the readjustment to two feet and catching yourself on the door frame as you looked inside—

And found nothing but an empty study.

The breath left your chest quickly, even though you couldn’t say what you had hoped to find. Not a mess of papers and books covering a desk or notes and photos and news clippings pinned to the wall with random bits of string connecting them in some strange web, that was for sure.

Photos and news clippings of everyone in the house.

You moved closer, but the jumble of images and half-formed ideas hastily scribbled down on the notes made no more sense the longer you looked at them. There were photos of the chef alongside a news article about his failed restaurant, something about Benjamin and a business you had never heard of, a cluster of articles about Damien and some pages that looked as though they had been taken straight from his desk, even some stuff about you and the hunter, but most of the strings started and branched out from two faces in particular: Celine and the Colonel, connected by torn pieces of a letter.

You turned back to the desk and spotted a typewriter among the mess, your heart momentarily leaping into your throat at the familiar typeface on the piece of paper still in the typewriter, identical to the notes on the cards.

Someone, and you were fairly sure you knew who, had sat here and typed out the same words, over and over until they bled together:

_The Colonel did it._

Next to the typewriter was the broken picture frame from Mark’s bedroom, out of which the Colonel stared back at you as he posed in his military uniform.

But that didn’t—

“There you are!” the Colonel said from the open doorway behind you. “I’ve been meaning to ask you some…questions…”

His eyes went down to the scattered pages and photos on the desk. “What is this? The hunter, he’s been keeping tabs on us?”

And then he spotted the wall, and the web of strings connecting him and Celine. “The hunter’s been keeping tabs on me, and Celine!”

“Colonel,” you started, but he didn’t wait for you to try and speak up for Abe.

“Don’t you see?! If he knew all of this, what’s to say he’s not the one who sent us those cards? He orchestrated all of this! He _did_ this!”

“You can’t know that—”

“Hunter!” the Colonel bellowed, already walking out of the room with his gun out. _“Hunter!”_

You followed after him as he took to the stairs, speaking out loud to you or to himself you weren’t sure as his voice went from angry to a pained rasp, as though he were close to tears. “Where is he? He took them from me…He took my friends from _me_. He took…Celine, he took Damien! Where is he?”

It was all you could do to keep up on the stairs or as he began to check one door after the other, your head spinning and your breath catching in your chest, not helped by the pain in your side that throbbed with every heartbeat, but when you opened your mouth and tried to speak, he just turned on you with the same manic anger that was growing with every second.

“WHERE IS HE?! Hunter! Are you hiding him from me?!”

“No,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper as you strained to speak. “Colonel, please—”

“He can’t hide forever. Get out of my way!”

The Colonel pushed past you, unaware of or not caring about the pained gasp as you caught yourself on the railing before spinning around when he shouted again.

“Hunter!”

Abe was standing at the other end of the hall, near the locked and bound door as though looking for something, but at the sound of the Colonel’s voice he turned, gun up and pointed directly at the other man.

“You’d better choose your next words carefully, Colonel,” Abe said, his eyes darting toward you before returning to the Colonel.

“Only my friends get to call me by that name, and you, sir, are no friend of mine!”

“Well, you’re one to talk about friends, you _murderer!_ ”

Neither man even flinched at the thunder overhead or stopped pointing their guns at the other, although the Colonel turned his head slightly to say to you, “I didn’t start this!”

“Colonel, Abe, you need to calm down,” you said, moving as close as you dared. You could feel it again, that same overwhelming presence that was there in the room with Celine, that overwhelming sense of dread and paranoia that seemed to take everyone in the area’s fight-or-flight response and kick it up to 11. It made you want to turn into the wolf in self-defense, to run, to hide, but for Celine it drove out any and all self-control she had, leaving her ready to fight the second your words seemed to threaten her.

And now it was affecting two men holdings loaded guns pointed at each other.

“Calm down?!” the Colonel said in disbelief. “This is madness!”

“Stay out of this, partner,” Abe muttered, eyes still locked on the Colonel. “And you wanna talk about madness? Madness is stealing your best friend’s wife. Madness is you and her concocting this sick plot to blackmail everyone—”

“Shut up!” roared the Colonel. “You’re the one dragging up everyone’s past, you’re the only one who could have known about—about—”

“Me?! Celine was the one with the fascination for the occult and all that Tarot card nonsense! So she uses her ‘special skills’ to drag up dirt on everybody, while you do her dirty work and steal my silver bullets so you can plant one in your—”

“Stop!” You tried to step in, but the Colonel brushed you off, his gun never wavering from the hunter. “Colonel, Abe doesn’t know about your—about Dave!”

“Who?” Abe asked.

“See?! And Abe, how could the Colonel have switched the bullets in your gun? It was locked away, and no one took the master key from the kitchen!”

“There are two keys!”

“I know. One from the kitchen,” you said, pulling out the key from your own pocket before gesturing toward the key bound in the lock to the sealed room. “And Mark’s key. Abe, where did you get that key from?”

The Colonel narrowed his eyes, but Abe just tightened his grip on his gun and said, “From Mark’s bedroom, where the Colonel probably tossed it and locked the door behind him, to throw off suspicion. He’s been here before, he knew about the second key!”

“But I didn’t know about any silver bullets,” the Colonel protested. “Mark didn’t tell me—Y/N, you can’t trust him, you know what he is!”

“Don’t you dare talk to my partner!” Abe shouted. “I know exactly what you are, you—”

“Shut up!”

“—plotted the death of your childhood friend because you couldn’t handle the—”

Another, this time unprompted crack of thunder came from overhead. Maybe the Colonel mistook it for the fire of the hunter’s gun, or it was a reflex as the lights in the house flickered, or maybe he finally reached his tipping point at the accusation of deliberately killing his friend.

Either way, Abe never got a chance to finish his sentence as a second blast of thunder marked the flash of the Colonel’s gun.

You saw Abe stagger backward before collapsing, heard the scream rip its way out of your chest as you lunged forward, the brief struggle with the Colonel before his gun fired again.

This time sending a silver bullet straight into your chest.

Everything slowed, your vision blurring as you stared at the blood on your hands before staggering backward, the Colonel’s outstretched hand too late to stop you from going over the railing behind you, his words lost behind the roar filling your ears as you plummeted to the floor below, your last sight that of the Colonel desperately reaching for you.

“It was an accident!”

Followed by the crash of darkness.

“I swear…”


	19. The Actor's Game

You found yourself lying in darkness, a void where all you could smell was your own blood, where all you could hear was your own heartbeat growing fainter with every second.

Until another body fell down beside you, just like he had this morning, a terrible moment that felt like ages ago—only this time Mark landed on his back, in the same position you found yourself in. A stain indicated the silver bullet in his chest, same as the one now in yours. Same as the unspent bullet that gleamed in the open palm of his hand as his eyes met yours before turning solid black, and his lips began to move.

_“It’s not fair, is it?”_

His corpse smiled back at you, any sign of life or whatever moving it disappearing as you scrambled to your feet and stood, the pain in your chest, in your back, in your side all faded, all…at a distance growing farther and farther away the longer you remained here.

“Mark,” you whispered, but the body didn’t speak again, gave no sign it could hear. “You…”

“He took everything from us.”

You looked up and saw them. Damien, Celine, but your brief joy turned to confusion again as you realized there was something not right about the twins. They weren’t solid, weren’t there in the same way as Mark’s body or even you seemed to be, but instead were like two lights in their image, one streaked with red, the other blue.

Shadows of themselves.

“He trapped us in here,” Damien continued, gesturing down at the body. “With this broken shell and no way out.”

“What do you mean?” you asked. “How could Mark—he _died_ , we saw his body—”

The body that was now lying in front of you, a body that, when you dared to look down again, bore all the signs of the damage Abe had found in his inspection. You could now clearly see the makeup, worn away to reveal bruises and scars that were clearly older than a single night ago.

“He did it to himself,” Celine explained. “The first time, I don’t think he knew, but in this house, in this place, death doesn’t mean the same thing. And he came back here, so many times.”

“…Why?” The question came as a breath, an exhale as you tried to understand.

“Because here in this place he had access to power, he could see things that have already happened, that might happen, and all the while that _thing_ was whispering in his ear, telling him whatever it wanted him to hear,” Celine answered, anger and bitterness tinging her tone. It wasn’t the same rage that had filled her before. She sounded exhausted as she continued, “This whole time I thought it was the house, but he…”

“No, I mean… _why?_ Why didn’t he come to us, we would have helped him!” Your voice broke, but Damien just shook his head.

“I don’t know. Maybe he just couldn’t believe that anymore. Whatever it was that drove him to this point, he used this place to use us, to manipulate us for his…his game! For his amusement!”

“Close your eyes, and you will see,” Celine instructed, and against your better judgement you did as she said.

For a second, there was just the darkness behind your eyelids, and then you saw him. You saw Mark, sitting at the typewriter in the uncluttered study, a spread of unaddressed envelopes waiting for him as he carefully loaded a blank card into the machine and began to type.

“Mark made those cards, he knew,” you whispered, but the Mark you were seeing now, the Mark of the past, couldn’t hear you.

“This place showed him things, like you’re seeing now,” Celine said in your ear. “Showed him exactly what he needed to make those cards and send them to himself the night of the party.”

The scene shifted and suddenly you were back at the party, watching from a distance as you buckled over, laughing as Abe lined up and completely failed to land his ball in the solo cup resting on the suit of armor. Watched as Mark, completely sober, pulled the Colonel aside and led him down into the cellar where he offered him a bottle, watched the argument until Mark made an offer to just let bygones be bygones, on one condition.

A game.

You watched as he took the Colonel’s gun and opened the barrel, making a show of taking out one of the bullets, except you could see every chamber was still loaded. In the dim light of the cellar, the Colonel failed to notice the extra bullet Mark showed him gleamed silver, same as the others in the gun the Colonel did not load, failed to see the trick when Mark aimed the gun at him and seemed to pull the trigger only for nothing to happen.

The Colonel smashed the bottle on the ground as he yelled at Mark, his face flooding red with anger until Mark abruptly handed him the gun and spread his arms out, daring him to shoot. And you could feel the other presence in the room, working with the alcohol and the Colonel’s anger until he gave in and spun the barrel of the gun, for all the good it did, aimed, and fired.

The rage instantly gave way to panic, regret, and horror as the Colonel backed away from the body on the ground before fleeing back up the stairs.

You saw Mark’s body lie there, until he breathed again, “life” flooding back into him before he slowly got back up on his feet and smiled to himself. While the others partied, while the Colonel came to terms with what he had done, Mark used his own master key to open Abe’s nightstand, swapping the bullets in the hunter’s gun while being careful to leave one chamber empty before returning the weapon to its place.

The same key he used to open your room in the dead of night and cross the floor to your hanging jacket, where he quickly found and swapped your cards for his own. He turned to leave and stopped, his eyes on the figure lying in the bed, half-hidden by the covers. You couldn’t read the expression on his face as he stared at the wolf, at you, before he reached out a hand and ran it through your fur.

And smiled, as if at some internal joke.

You opened your eyes, not wanting to see any more, already knowing what happened next. Mark locked his key in his own room before taking a fall from the balcony at just the right time to be found by you, just so that he could watch how it all played out.

But his body was still lying here, lifeless and smiling.

“We played right into his hands,” Damien said, sharing a look with his sister. “He’d been planning this and now that son-of-a-bitch is out there walking around in _my_ body—”

“Damien, we can’t do this right now,” Celine interrupted, her palms outstretched in a calming gesture before she turned to you. “Look, I know you have questions but I can’t answer everything right now. We don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean?” you asked.

Damien sighed, looking down at the body between you. “You can’t stay here, not for long. Or else you’ll end up like us.”

Celine raised a hand, stopping you before you could ask what he meant. “What’s important is you know that Mark took everything from us on his twisted quest of vengeance. But death does not mean the same thing here.”

“What Celine means by that is…this doesn’t have to be the end.” Hope began to rise in Damien’s voice as he continued, “You’re trapped in here just the same as us, but your body…Broken as it may be, it’s still out there. You can still feel it, can’t you?”

You hesitated and then nodded. That distant pain was still there, still calling out to you with each fading heartbeat.

“Mark’s not the only one that can use this place to his benefit,” Celine said, her voice gaining a strange echo. “Your body is a literal lifeline for you right now, and for us as well.”

“But you can’t go back on your own,” Damien said, and you could hear the same echo in his voice. As though they were both fading even further away with each passing second. “You’re dead, after all. The Colonel saw to that.”

“You can’t blame him. Honestly, he’s a good man,” Celine said earnestly, although her voice fell while Damien shook his head. “But he’s dangerous now.”

“He said…He said you were the one to keep him sane,” you said, and for a moment Celine seemed much older, so much sadder. She had been the one worth keeping his humanity for, and now… “What did you mean about my body being a lifeline for you too?”

“I know this all sounds crazy,” Damien admitted. “Honestly, I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But I know that I trust Celine, and she believes that your body could be a—a sort of anchor, to draw Mark’s empty body to you once you’re back. We can use that to get out of here, to buy enough time to find Mark and make him pay. If you trust us…just…let me in. We can fix this. Together.”

“I won’t force this on you,” Celine said, and you heard no trace of her taunt back at the house that had drawn you into agreeing to the séance, or the anger as she demanded you to go back. Just a soft plea as she said, “You have a choice here. Just know that this is the only way that you can escape.”

The only way that they could escape, too. Their lights were growing dimmer, at times flickering so much that you were afraid they might disappear completely at any second.

So it was never really a choice, was it?

You nodded, and you saw the relief on their faces, saw Damien nod along with you while Celine raised her hands, same as when she had drawn you into looking in the crystal ball earlier.

“Just relax.”

As the darkness drew in around you again, Damien gave you the soft smile you knew so well and said, “This’ll work. I promise.”

Thunder rumbled as you opened your eyes again, the blurry vision of the chandelier and balcony overhead greeting you at the same time the pain crashed down in a tidal wave. You were too aware of every beat of your heart, of the blood slowly beginning to course its way through your body again, each pulse highlighting the burn in your side, the broken bones from the fall, the fire in your chest from the silver bullet still lodged there. Any one of those injuries would have been easily overwhelming on their own, but all together it made your vision swirl and threatened to send you back into darkness again.

_“Let me help you.”_

The whisper came from somewhere in the back of your mind, and you felt Damien’s comforting, familiar presence slide in and take control. As if at a distance, you watched yourself sit up, the jacket heavy with medals thrown over your body falling to the black and white tiled floor.

Even with their help, your body struggled to stand, but eventually the room stopped spinning long enough to turn around and spot the man sitting on the bench near the door, cradling a silver-topped cane to his chest, who stared at you in disbelief until you quickly backed away.

“Oh, no, no!” The Colonel, looking different without his jacket and hat, slowly stood with his hand outstretched, his voice low and gentle as though trying to reassure a startled deer. “It’s okay.”

His mouth worked for a moment, joy flooding his features as he tried to find the words, while your body stood there, too distant for you to speak through even if you knew what to say yourself.

“I-I thought you were dead,” he said, stepping closer. He shook his head, his voice rising and growing more frantic as he said, “I-I-I mean, of course you’re not dead! You’re not—how could you be dead? I mean, I-I wouldn’t have killed you. I-I didn’t kill you.”

There was something wrong, more than just the Colonel’s denial as he circled around you and placed the cane down in front of the mirror, the start of a chuckle forming on his lips.

“I mean, of cour—I-I…Of course! I didn’t kill anybody! I didn’t—It was all a joke! A game, from the very start! Were you in on this?!”

He was closer now, smiling, but his eyes, already red from crying, looked close to breaking into tears again. You tried, to move, to say something, but while your body turned to face him and watch, you weren’t the one in control.

“Did Damien put you up to this? Of course he did!” The Colonel backed away, a limp in his step that you hadn’t noticed until now as he looked around, as though expecting everyone else to come bursting out of a door at any moment. “Damien, where are you, you rapscallion? Where are you? Celine! Ah, it’s time to come out now!”

He staggered away, his voice trailing off as he began to search the house. “It was good, it was good! You almost had me! …Celine?”

Your body turned back toward the mirror, and stood there for a moment, eyes focused on the cane while the Colonel’s voice grew farther and farther away.

_Damien? Celine?_

Your questioning thought reached out and found only silence until Damien responded, again like a faint whisper just beyond the edge of your hearing.

_“We’ll do what we can to set this right. To make Mark **pay** for what he’s done.”_

_“But first we need a body,”_ Celine’s voice said, fading in over Damien’s. _“Just close your eyes, Y/N, and let us take care of this.”_

_“Trust us,”_ Damien echoed, as you already felt your consciousness slipping from your grasp. _“Trust me.”_

But that was a mistake, a mistake you realized too late when you woke to pain, greater than any you had ever known. What had happened? Had something gone wrong?

You couldn’t feel the twins’ presence anymore, and when you looked up you found yourself looking into the mirror, at someone else’s reflection.

It was Mark, or his broken body at least with the bruises around his neck and the deathly lack of color in his face, but there was something very not like Mark in how he picked up the cane the Colonel left behind and studied it for a moment.

“Damien?” You tried to speak, but the name was more like a gasp of pain as the burning static in your head grew, louder and louder until he cracked his neck and the glass in between you cracked as well.

The body’s appearance blurred and shifted, momentarily appearing like Celine before settling into Damien’s likeness. But when his eyes met yours, you realized that you had never seen that look on his face before, that kind of anger. His lips moved before pressing together as though to hold back what he wanted to say, and without a word he turned and walked out of sight.

Leaving you alone, in what you now realized was the wrong side of the mirror’s glass.


	20. Silver Prison

The pain never stopped inside of the mirror. It pressed down on every side, within and without, making every movement no matter how small hurt, making every breath feel like your lungs were on fire, every thought slow and sluggish as your brain wanted to just shut down from it all but couldn’t.

But more than that, it felt like your heart was being ripped out, again and again, every time you remembered why you were here.

They left you here, _he_ left you here.

You trusted him, he promised…

The room on the other side of the glass blurred, not for the first time.

How long had you been in here? It was hard to tell whether the shadow that occasionally fell across the windows was truly night or yet another storm passing by, especially when you sometimes blinked and found the darkened room was suddenly bright again without any in between.

So it was difficult to tell how long it had been, before a finger tapped on the glass.

You looked up, heart leaping at the sight of the blurred figure on the other side of the mirror until your vision readjusted.

“They really did a number on you, didn’t they?” Mark asked. His expression could have almost been mistaken for concern, if you didn’t know exactly what he was. “Who knew Damien had it in him?”

He seemed momentarily surprised by the growl that emanated from the mirror, but then he just smiled and made a show of brushing a piece of lint off of his red jacket’s sleeve. Almost casually, he remarked, “So I’m guessing they told you about my little trick at the party.”

“You did this,” you said, barely able to summon the strength to speak, much less to shout, to rage at the man behind this all, as much as you wanted to. Instead, you could only ask, “… _Why_?”

For a moment, you thought he couldn’t even hear you as he continued readjusting his bow tie, as though he were looking into his own reflection, but once done his expression hardened as his eyes met yours.

“Me? I didn’t put you in this mirror. I’m not the one who pulled the trigger. I didn’t steal another man’s wife, I didn’t look my friend in the eyes and _lie_ to them, _for years on end!_ ” He leaned in closer to the mirror, the palms of his hand resting on the table underneath it, and said, “All I did was send a couple of cards and show you all what it’s like to know _everyone_ around you is hiding something, to never know who you can trust because no matter how long or how well you think you know someone—well, _apparently_ that doesn’t mean anything.”

“You didn’t—” You stopped mid sentence, one hand going to the glass to support yourself as a fresh wave of pain hit you, so hard that for a moment Mark and the room behind him almost disappeared.

“Then again, maybe your problem was more choosing the wrong person to trust with your precious secret,” Mark said, his voice muffled but slowly coming back into focus. “I never expected them to take that mirror card so literally, but I suppose that’s Damien for you. I wonder if the sweet, innocent mayor was tired of protecting and covering for you. And don’t even get me started on that monster hunter.”

_“Don’t.”_

Mark arched an eyebrow at that. “Sure, if I were being charitable, I might think the twins piloting that rotten corpse just wanted you out of the way, to keep you somewhere safe while they went on their revenge crusade against the big, bad Markiplier. I mean they could have taken your body instead with a little more effort, so that’s something. Except…then they’d have to deal with that whole curse thing you have going on, wouldn’t they? And there’s the little fact that dear Damien knows just as well as I do that this mirror was an antique that came with the house. My parents paid a fortune to have it re-silvered, brought it up all the time—did you know that mirrors are basically sheets of glass coated with silver? So, to trap a werewolf in a mirror…”

He paused, but when there was no response from the other side of the glass, he continued.

“Needlessly cruel, I have to say. But I could help you, Y/N. I could get you out of there.”

He reached toward the glass only to pause again when a second growl, deeper and stronger than the last, came from your throat. You couldn’t even stand to _look_ at him, walking around in that stolen body, smiling with his stolen face and acting like he hadn’t ruined so many lives, much less listen to any more of his lies.

“…Or not, if that’s what you want,” Mark said, taking a step back with his hands raised. He smiled at you. “But maybe some time in your silver prison will give you some perspective. I’ll come back around, once you’re ready to learn how to _heel_.”

You snarled, face distorting to become more like the wolf as Mark turned and walked out the door, but once he was gone the growl faded into a quiet, desperate whine.

—

It took far longer for Abe to wake up, without someone else to help guide the way, but he did. After all, death didn’t mean the same thing here.

He woke with a pain in his chest to an empty and silent house. The gun in his hand slipped to the floor as his fingers desperately searched beneath his stained shirt and found the wound that he shouldn’t have survived, that wasn’t bleeding like it should be even if it still hurt like hell. How long had he been out?

He tried to stand and gave that idea up quickly, instead choosing to sit there while his lungs struggled against the effort of breathing again, while his searching eyes went from the sealed door to the balcony railing, scattered and fraying thoughts slowly piecing themselves back together.

The Colonel.

He shot him—which, honestly, wasn’t as surprising as the fact that he was still, somehow, alive.

Abe remembered the shock, his vision fading as he slowly slid down the wall, he remembered your scream, a sound he didn’t even know you were capable of.

And he remembered the sound of the second gunshot, the crack still audible over the Colonel’s desperate voice before everything went dark.

“Partner,” Abe whispered, and then shouted as he dragged himself over to the railing and looked through the bars at the black and white tiles so far down below, empty except for a single stain and a discarded military jacket.

It wasn’t a pretty run down the stairs, but Abe made it, one hand pressed tight to his chest, the other keeping a firm grip on his gun. The lobby area swirled and danced around him as he spun, eyes desperately searching for the one thing he was terrified to find, but there was no sign of you or your body.

“Y/N!” he screamed, but there was no answer except the echo of his own voice.

A silver bullet, straight to the chest. It was a miracle he was still alive, but you—you couldn’t be…

A shuddering gasp escaped from his chest and Abe took off again, searching every room of the house and trying, desperately, not to finish that thought. Not that it did anything to stop the tears streaming freely down his cheeks, as his voice calling out your name, calling out for his partner, went from a shout to a shaking whisper.

Eventually, he found himself standing in the lobby again, now sure that he was the only one left in this terrible, cursed house. There wasn’t even a body to hold, to grieve over, to lay to rest. The Colonel hadn’t even left him that much.

Abe pressed his hand to his chest again. The pain was still there, but he wasn’t dead yet. And somewhere out there, his partner’s murderer was still walking around, but he knew how to fix that.

After all, if there was one thing Abe knew how to do, it was how to hunt a monster.

He turned and walked out the front door, the last person to do so for years. The house sat silent and in theory empty, undisturbed until the door opened again. Until Abe heard about the reports of a break-in and strange lights coming from the house up on the hill, until he forced himself to go and see for himself the door left hanging open, the disturbed dust on the tiles suggesting the intruders only came in as far as the lobby, where the shattered remains of the mirror lay scattered on the floor.

He couldn’t know then, what it would mean for him or his long-lost partner.

Although he might have had the faintest hope of an idea, if he had seen the large paw prints leading away from the house, running in an unsteady line toward the nearby woods.


End file.
